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TE PGMA ee pee 


- 











—— 








CITIES OF SICILY 














TAORMINA 


CITIES OF SICILY 


BY 


EDWARD HUTTON 


WITH I2 ILLUSTRATIONS IN 
COLOUR BY 


HARRY MORLEY 


I4 OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP 


BOSTON 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
1926 











| 50 | UY WIFE 
CHARLOTTE HUTTON, 

TO WHOM I OWE THE CHIEF HAPPINESS 
ego OF MY LIFE , 


IN TOTO CORDE MEO Tee 








VII 


CONTENTS 


MESSINA . : é : = 
TAORMINA . : “ 
THE SKIRTS OF Rawk: AG ie AND CATANIA 
ETNA : ‘ 
ON THE WAY TO SYRACUSE 
SYRACUSE 
I Syracuse 
II The Story of Syrardsa 
III Ortygia . ; 
IV Achradina 
V_ Neapolis 
VI Epipolz 
ROUND ABOUT SYRACUSE 
I The Fountain of Cyane 
II The Aqueduct 
III The Promontory of Troailis: 
IV To Acre : A : 
V_ Pantalica ; 
VI Cava di Spampanato : : 
ON THE WAY TO GIRGENTI: CALTAGIRONE AND 
GELA ; 2 F : 
GIRGENTI 
SELINUNTE - : . é 
MAzzARA, MaArRSALA, MorTya, ited Mount 
Eryx 
SEGESTA 
PALERMO : : : 
BAGHERIA, Siok AND THE Nias COAST 


INDEX . 


ix 





LIST OF PLATES 


IN COLOUR 
TAORMINA . : ; : ; : Frontispiece 
FACING PAGE 
ETNA FROM TAORMINA . : : ; : See 
LEMONS . . ; : , : . ; A a. + - 
CATHEDRAL, SYRACUSE. : - ‘ : Pilar’. 
GREEK THEATRE, SYRACUSE : : : ; : 86 
SIMIAN STREET  .  . : : . : f-3%2 
TEMPLE OF ‘‘CASTOR AND POLLUX,’’ GIRGENTI . Wes 
SCIARE . ; ; P ; : : é 138 
SICILIAN CART. ; : 154 
PALERMO SEA FRONT ; : : : : 176 
CATHEDRAL, PALERMO ; ’ : : : 186 
IN THE MADONIE . : : : ‘ : Ree te, 
IN MONOTONE 
A Map oF SIcILy . : : . Front Endpaper 
(From a drawing by Harry Morley and A. E. Taylor) 

*ALMOND BLossoM AT TAORMINA, ETNAIN THE DISTANCE 14 
*THE LATOMIA DEI CAPPUCCINI ‘ : ; ‘ 78 
*TEMPLE OF ‘‘ CONCORD,’’ GIRGENTI . , ; 880 
THE THEATRE AT ACRE, i 3 “ ‘ Fes oe 
JTHE THEATRE, SEGESTA . ‘ j : : or 100 
{GREEK STREET AT SELINUNTE : ; ‘ . » 566 
{PULPIT, CAPPELLA PALATINA, PALERMO . : TOG 
tS. GIOVANNI DEGLI EREMITI, PALERMO . ; . 190 
{THE CLOISTER AT MONREALE . ; ‘ “ 1 Ge 
{BronzE Doors By BoNANNO, MONREALE , ee (9 

{Mosaic OF THE DEATH OF THE VIRGIN, LA MARTORANA, 
PALERMO. : ‘ ‘ ; : : «200 
{CHIESA DEI VESPRI, PALERMO. : : : 2. 206 
TEMPLE C, AT SELINUNTE : ; ; . ; 226 
{CEFALU . - : x - , ‘ - - 226 


* Photographs by Crupi. { Photographs by Alinarit. 
xi 





CITIES OF SICILY 


CHAPTER I 
MESSINA 


HERE might seem to be little or nothing to see at 
Messina, since the earthquake of 28th December, 
1908, which in the early morning, long before light, 
in some thirty seconds destroyed the whole city, and more 
than 84,000 of its 120,000 inhabitants. Such a disaster, 
so far beyond the utmost ferocity of man, in its quite 
final achievement at any rate, in its suddenness if not 
in its imbecility, appals one, and, I suppose, attracts one 
to the spot, in spite of the fact, which, from any human 
point of view only makes the catastrophe more tragic, that 
Messina had no more to do with it than has the sailor 
with the tempest that destroys his ship. He too must 
suffer the acts of nature with a modicum of the same 
stolidity as Messina has shown, and like her, not once nor 
twice, begin anew. 

In Naples they regard things differently. For they 
declare that Messina suffered because she had not loved 
her Madonna enough.? So the companions of Odysseus 
hereabout were drowned for paying too little attention to 


1 It would be very strange that the people of Messina should not 
love their Madonna, for it was to them she is said to have written 
the only letter we hear of from her hand. This letter was pre- 
served in the Cathedral where, under the baldachin, was the ancient 
picture of the ‘‘ Madonna of the Letter” attributed to S. Luke, 
The letter was written in Hebrew on the occasion of the conver- 
sion of the Messenians’by S. Paul, who is said to have translated 
it into Greek. 


1 


2 CITIES OF SICILY 


Helios Hyperion, then the God of these shores. Would 
they were right! So might we avoid such chaos as this, 
taking heaven by prayer or violence. But the forces of 
nature, as unaware of man as they are certainly indifferent 
to him, involve him in their unknowable business to his 
wholesale undoing. Nor is this, their latest and worst, 
their only effort, here in Messina. 

In the year 1783 on the 5th February Messina had been 
destroyed with its inhabitants by earthquake: an awful 
business, but a mere rehearsal of what was to happen in 
1908. These Polyphemic and grotesque forces have not 
yet met their Odysseus : it might appear unlikely they will 
ever do so. Yet, in the womb of time, perhaps he lies, 
and of our race, who shall enslave them, and they shall 
serve him and do his bidding. When that time comes 
we shall have avenged—alas, poor souls !—our comrades 
slain. 

Yes, something like that, some dumb resentment— 
against what, against whom ?—stirs in the heart as you 
wander to-day amid what is still the débris, though tidied 
up. That monstrous cathedral gapes and proclaims 
that the gods were not accountable—sinned against, not 
sinning: Oedy déxntt dvdxtwyv. In ignorance men built 
within a curved line of earth fracture, following an arc 
drawn from a centre in Stromboli, within which, we are 
told, the earth is gradually sinking and is in an unstable 
condition. The earthquakes of 1693, 1783, might seem 
like broad hints—not broad enough. Those gallant fools 
rebuilt Messina and inhabited it, and their descendants, 
what is left of them, after a more terrible experience, are 
doing the same. 

How admirable that is !—as much in its patience as in 
its courage. It should even reconcile one to what is being 
built, so sturdily, if without the old effect of beauty, along 
that haughty sea-front. It was, after all, a ramshackle 
city that sprang up after 1783, top-heavy and without 
foundations. To-day they thrust downward, till like an 
oak Messina shall have as much beneath as above ground, 
I wonder if with any better success. That curved line 
of earth fracture. ... Far off be that day! 


MESSINA 8 


But a morning was enough, for me at any rate. The 
new buildings, a whole street of them, even more than 
that ghastly cathedral, those gaping walls, the whole 
rickety ruin, inhuman and unbearable, destroyed all my 
pleasure in that incomparable site, the infinite beauty and 
variety of that noble shore upon the most famous strait 
in the world. 

So, sometimes, I took to the sea and went sailing up the 
strait into the Tyrrhene along the Italian shore; or, 
sometimes, in the afternoon, I made my way, always by 
the shore, out beyond Messina, through village after village, 
past the sea lakes of Pantano where the shell-fish are so 
good fresh from the sea, to the Faro and Cape Peloro. 
Nothing else about Messina is half so fine as this road 
which begins by giving you the whole marvellous curve 
of the harbour, the famous sickle, which first named the 
place Zankle; and on the way offers you the majestic view 
of the strait, here less than three miles across from shining 
shore to shining shore. As you go forward you see them 
all, the towns and villages upon the Calabrian side, Reggio, 
Gallico and Villa San Giovanni, till Scilla comes in sight 
at the northern entrance of the strait, and, beyond Scilla, 
Bagnara and beyond again Palmi and Gioja till Capo 
Vaticano far stretched into the sunset closes the view. And 
behind these golden and embowered places rise the noble 
outlines and towered peaks of the barren Aspromonte.? 

There at the Faro I would lie down on the pale sand 
strewn with the pumice-stone, fragments—for me—of the 
Clashing Rocks, with the A¢olian Isles before me, mountains 
floating on that violet sea. 

1 Half-way between Messina and the Faro, on the Via Pompeia, 
is the village of Pace where was the church of ‘‘ the Grotta.’’ The 
interest of the place lies in this, that it is said to be the site of the 


“hollow cave’’ where Odysseus dragged up his ship when the 
wind obliged him to leave Messina: 

; We moored our well-built ship in the hollow harbour 
near a spring of sweet water (Messina) ... But when it was the 
third watch of the night and the stars had turned their course, 
Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, roused against us a fierce wind with a 
wondrous tempest . . . and as soon as early Dawn appeared . 
we dragged our ship and made her fast in a hollow cave where 
were the fair dancing-floors and seats of the nymphs.” 


4 CITIES OF SICILY 


It is a lonely shore for all its beauty. Not many, it 
seems, care for Scylla and Charybdis, or seek this place of 
the Fig Tree for the sake of Odysseus, or, here where the 
Tyrrhene and the Ionian meet, know this sea for what it 
is—the Cup of Homer. 

‘ How often have [I lain there and at all hours, yet have 
always been alone! My frequent visits to this spot, 
together with my voyages with Alessandro and Pietro in 
that eyed boat of theirs, which was as nameless as Odysseus’ 
ship, at all seasons and states of wind and tide, but most 
often in the early morning and at evening, have been 
made in the fond hope of seeing, of finding Charybdis. 
Just that wonder, so dear to Antiquity, I have never seen, 
but, in such a place, what others have I not surprised ? 

The Cup of Homer. ... Yes, you may walk there for 
hours undisturbed on that pale sand, which divides the 
unharvested sea from a sea of wild flowers; or scarcely 
drifting in the current or the tide, or flying before the 
same wind out of the south that wrecked Odysseus, in the 
ever-changing light, or under Bodtes or under Orion, that 
sea before you, understand perhaps for the first time the 
whole great story. 

Here at least was the turning point, the crisis of those 
wanderings. Here, after many sorrows, many adventures, 
after losing all his other ships and finally all his comrades, 
he is at last left alone. Here in this strait divine Charybdis 
sucks down his broken ship, while he, like a bat, clings to 
the tall Fig Tree; and when she spews it forth again, 
mast and keel, he drops down on to the spars and alone 
rides out into the large. 

That befell, the whole world has ever agreed, here in 
this strait. But I would ask myself or Alessandro or Pietro, 
who knew nothing about it, does not he say himself that 
all his adventures befell while he was exploring “‘ the straits 
of the sea’’—éao" éudyynoa ndgovs dAdc é&eoecivwy ?4 


1 Odyssey xii, 259. I know that many English translators have 
rendered mdpous adds: the paths of the sea. I have always won- 
dered what they meant. The word mépos means literally a means 
of passing, e.g. a ford or ferry, and thus a strait, a way, a track, 
and secondarily a way or means of achieving. To translate mopous 


MESSINA 5 


I used to think about that among the wild flowers at 
the Faro. There was always plenty of time before the 
tide turned and Charybdis, invisible at the moment, might 
be hoped for. Meanwhile the little goatherd on the shady 
side of the sand dunes piped sweetly. 

Follow it for a moment. Odysseus when he missed 
Malea was making the difficult passage of the Strait of 
Cythera, the entrance from the well-known A®gean into 
the Ionian. That passage is to-day called the Elaphonisi 
Channel. So he began. Suppose that the Lotus Eaters 
dwelt in what we know as Tunisia: then the strait was 
either that of Tunis itself, or, more likely, of Jerba. The 
adventure of the Cyclops marked the passage between 
Ischia and Italy, if as I should maintain that adventure 
befell in the Phlegrzean Fields; the encounter with Aé£olus, 
the passage between Sicily and the AKolian Isles. The 
horrible adventure with the Laestrygones, in which Odysseus 
lost all his ships save only his own, marked perhaps the 
passage between Corsica and Sardinia, while that with 
Circe befell in the shallow miasmic waters between the 
mainland of Italy and the Pontine Islands, of which 
steep Monte Circeo once formed a part. The Sirens would 
thus mark the passage between Capri and the headland 
of Sorrento, a place full in the face of the scirocco; and 
finally the tremendous double adventure of Scylla and 
Charybdis is the passage of the greatest and most impor- 
tant strait of all—the Strait of Messina. 

This strait was the way from the Ionian into the Tyrrhene 
Sea. 

When Odysseus passed or attempted to pass the Strait 
of Cythera he was, so far at any rate as he was concerned, 
in known waters, though it may be that for the A®¥gean 
civilization of which he is the representative adventurer, 
the Ionian was still something of a mystery. To pass 
from the Ionian into the Tyrrhene was to enter the un- 
known. It was no doubt a tremendous achievement for 
a Greek, and it is there that every adventure of Odysseus 


adds as “‘ paths of the sea’ is surely only accurate if it refers to 
the straits or perhaps the trade routes. It is, in any looser sense, 
merely rhetorical, since the sea has no paths. 

2 


6 CITIES OF SICILY 


takes place. In the Strait between the two seas the crisis 
of the story is reached. 

Thence Odysseus is blown into faéryland, if you will, 
only not into fairyland. If, as has been maintained, 
Calypso’s Isle lies in the Strait of Gibraltar between 
the Pillars of Herakles, we see Odysseus standing on the 
threshold of the ocean. 

The poem thus becomes an account of the gateways, 
that is the Straits, of the Western Mediterranean : a gather- 
ing up of all that was known or might be overheard of that 
mysterious sea. 

Overheard . . . Just there, maybe, we have the truth. 
I confess, after many wet miles of tramping in and out 
of the Messina Strait, after many hours with the Odyssey 
beside Charybdis and in sight of Scylla, I cannot any 
longer believe that Homer himself ever really saw this 
place. He heard the stories of the sailors, of sailors rather 
Phoenician than Greek, for the Greeks were always poor 
seamen, though not so poor as the Romans: he heard 
the stories of the sea as Shakespeare heard later the stories 
of Italy and Italian sunshine—even of Messina—about 
the Court or in the taverns of London, and both made 
immortal use of what they heard. 

But what is it exactly that Homer tells us of these 
shores ? 

Alessandro and Pietro who sail me up and down, in 
and out, of these Straits whenever I so desire—and that 
is as often as may be—know nothing of Odysseus, not 
even under his Latin pseudonym of Ulysses. The Madonna 
and the Reali di Francia are more in their line. Quite 
right. Happily they can neither read nor write. They 
are admirable sailors and have known all these waters from 
childhood, and vicariously, if you will consider it, through 
their ancestors for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. 
They may be Sicani and Iberian, or Sikeli from Italy, or 
Pheenician or Greek or Saracen or Norman or all these 
combined, by origin; but I like to think they derive from 
that band of pirates from Cyme in Opicia itself a colony of 
Chalcis of whom Thucydides speaks as having first founded 
the city of Zankle or Messina, They believe in marvels 


MESSINA 7 


but not my marvels. Still we have much in common. 
We have together visited every corner of these coasts, we 
have sailed as far as the A®olian Isles, as far as Naxos 
ruined in a lemon grove on a black tongue of lava thrust 
into the violet sea, for my part, in search of sea monsters 
and clashing rocks, but the only marvel they looked for 
was the Fata Morgana. AsIsaid we had much in common. 

They had seen that amazement and longed to show 
it to me. It seems that one morning they were lying 
off Reggio just after dawn. It was a dead calm and 
already hot, the tide or current on the turn up the strait 
but not yet really on the move. While they were fishing, 
suddenly Alessandro happened to look up and there in 
the sky he beheld a city far more glorious and splendid 
than the Messina he knew. Was it the Messina of long 
ago, that great Greek city he had heard of, established there 
for ever in the heavens and visible to him on that morning 
by a special grace of the Madonna? He crossed himself. 
To be thus blest! And shouting for joy, called upon 
Pietro to share the vision. And the brothers embraced 
and gazed upon that city not made with hands till it 
passed from their sight. 

So, long ago, Father Angelucci saw the same glorious 
spectacle and left us the following account of it: 

“On the fifteenth of August 1643 as I stood at my win- 
dow I was surprised with a most wonderful, delectable 
vision. The sea that washes the Sicilian shore swelled up 
and became for ten miles in length like a chain of dark 
mountains ; while the waters near our Calabrian coast 
grew quite smooth, and in an instant appeared as one clear 
polished mirror reclining against the aforesaid ridge. On 
this glass was depicted in chiaroscuro a string of several 
thousand pilasters, all equal in altitude, distance, and 
degree of light and shade. In a moment they lost half 
their height and bent into arcades like Roman Aqueducts. 
A long cornice was next formed on the top, and above 
it rose castles innumerable, all perfectly alike. These 
soon split into towers, which were shortly after lost in 
colonnades, then windows, and at last ended in pines, 
cypresses and other trees even and similar. This is the 


8 CITIES OF SICILY 


Fata Morgana which for twenty-six years I had thought a 
mere fable.’ 

This was what Alessandro and Pietro longed to show 
me, this is what they believed I sought as with the big 
chart on my knees and the Odyssey open beside me we sailed 
those seas. 

Perhaps they were right, for assuredly what I sought 
remained a vision without tangible reality. The only 
Clashing Rocks I found, though indeed we sailed through 
and through the isles of A‘olus, were strewn upon those 
unfrequented beaches—fragments of pumice-stone, that 
yet, in fact, when Odysseus sailed from Troy, may have 
been mighty rocks hurled forth by Stromboli or Vulcano 
to float wandering upon these waters, and, grinding and 
clashing together, may well have endangered a ship— 
even the ‘‘ Argo ’’ which, according to Apollonius Rhodius, 
the virgin daughters of Nereus like a school of dolphins, 
guided by Thetis, lifting the edge of their garments over 
their snow-white knees, bore up out of the sea and sent 
through the air over the waves and the clashing wander- 
ing rocks ; and round them the water spouted and foamed. 
So, a whole long day of springtime, they toiled, bearing the 
ship between the loud echoing rocks. | 

Nothing of this saw we for all our trouble: only the 
pumice-strewn beaches of silver, only the white feather of 
smoke over Vulcano, and the sea-birds, wheeling about us 
over the wine-faced sea, under the soft sky, with so 
infinite a grace that, for what I know, they may well 
have been those milk-white Nereids, who bore up the 
“‘Argo’’ into safety, while Hera threw her arms about 
Athena in fear as she gazed, for Jason was dear to her, 
so long ago. 

Nor was I more fortunate with Scylla than with the 
Planctae and Charybdis. 

Homer in the Twelfth Book of the Odyssey describes 
Scylla and Charybdis. He says the rock of Scylla reached 
with its sharp peak to the broad heaven and a dark cloud 
surrounded it. This never melted away, nor did clear 
sky ever surround that peak in summer or in harvest time, 
No mortal man could scale it or set foot upon the top, 


MESSINA 9 


not though he had twenty hands and feet ; for the rock was 
smooth, as if it were polished. And in the midst of the 
cliff was a dim cave, turned to the west, towards Erebus. 
Not even a man of might could shoot an arrow from the 
hollow ship so as to reach into that vaulted cave. Therein 
dwelt Scylla, yelping terribly. ... But the other cliff 
was lower—they were close to each other ; Odysseus might 
even shoot an arrow across—and on it was a great fig tree 
with rich foliage, and beneath it divine Charybdis sucked 
down the black water. 

Nothing really like this is to be seen to-day. To begin 
with, the strait at its narrowest is nowhere less than near 
two miles wide!; but according to Homer’s description, 
it was so narrow that not only could Odysseus shoot an 
arrow across it, but the spray of Charybdis ‘‘ would fall 
on the tops of both cliffs.’’ 2 

Again, the distance between Scylla and the Punta del 
Faro is three sea miles, that is, 6,080 yards, and between 
Scylla and the whirlpool of Charybdis rather more. In 
approaching Scylla, whether from Sicily or from Capo 
Vaticano, what you see is a bold headland thrust out, but 
not far, into the sea, its level top crowned by the great 
flat-roofed castle. The height of this promontory is not 
more than eighty metres. There is to-day no cave upon 
its western face half-way to the top—say 120 feet from the 
sea. If there were, even Paris, nay even Eros could easily 
shoot an arrow into it, while it would be beyond the power 
of glorious Odysseus himself to reach Scylla from Charybdis, 
even with his famous bow that no one but he could bend. 

I have beaten about Scylla of the rock at all seasons 
and in all weathers. On one fortunate day I landed there 
upon the western base of the headland. When the north- 
west wind was blowing pretty lively, indeed in any wind, 
I have heard enormous roarings and voices, and sometimes 
strange howlings about the headland, but they were the 


1 10,600 feet, or about one and three-quarters sea miles. 

2 Odyssey, xii, 239. How this could be, even though Scylla 
and Charybdis had been close together, I do not understand, since 
the cliff of Scylla was so high that it was always lost in the clouds 
even in full summer (Od. xii, 73-5). 


10 CITIES OF SICILY 


innumerable voices of the sea and not the yelping of 
Scylla. 

And yet ... Alessandro and Pietro never liked the 
place ; they pointed to the teeth of the monster too often 
bared, through which the sea foamed, the long stretched 
reefs like reaching arms, and were glad to put out again 
into the large. 

And yet . . . Fra Leo Alberti, writing in the sixteenth 
century, says: ‘‘Scylla hath a rock shaped like a man, 
surrounded by caves emitting howls of wolves and screams 
of beasts.’”” And the Abbé Lazzaro Spallanzani, Fellow 
of the Royal Society and Professor of Natural History 
in the University of Pavia, writing at the end of the eight- 
eenth century, declares he heardthesame. ‘“‘ I proceeded,’’ 
he says, “‘in a small boat to Scylla. This is a lofty rock 
distant twelve miles from Messina, which rises almost 
perpendicularly from the sea, on the shore of Calabria, and 
beyond which is the small city of the same name. Though 
there was scarcely any wind, I began to hear, two miles 
before I came to the rock, a murmur and noise like a con- 
fused barking of dogs, and on a nearer approach readily 
discovered the cause. This rock in its lower part contains 
a number of caverns ; one of the largest of which is called 
by the people Drvagara. The waves when in the least 
agitated rushing into these caverns break, dash, throw up 
frothy bubbles and thus occasion these various and multi- 
plied sounds.”’ 4 3 

It may be so. But even though Spallanzani were right 
as to the origin of the noises he heard, it scarcely affects 
the description of Homer. If Homer is to be believed, 
enormous changes must have befallen this strait, and in 
fact we know this to beso. What precisely may have been 
the effect of the numberless earthquakes since Homer’s 
day we have no means of knowing; but we have records 
of what befell Scylla in the earthquake of 1783, and these 
are enough to explain our disillusion. That earthquake in 
fact changed the face of Scylla, which was wholly overthrown 
on the night of 5th February. Vast portions of the rock 


1 Abbé Lazzaro Spallanzani : Travels in the Two Sicilies (London, 
1798). Vol. iv, 169 et seq. 


a ve ae 


MESSINA 11 


and of the mountains above Scylla were thrown into the 
strait. One huge wave resulting from the convulsion 
swept over the strand of the bay and engulfed in one 
moment 2,475 human beings who had there taken refuge 
from the falling city. 

“The walls and towers of the Castle were split asunder 
and overturned upon the town,” we read ; “‘ the buildings 
below were crushed to atoms and one hundred and fifty 
persons perished in this fall. At night a considerable 
part of the inhabitants, chiefly of the class of sailors, fol- 
lowed the example of the Prince of Scilla and repaired to 
the beach; they there pitched tents, or lay down in their 
barks, hoping to pass the night in perfect security, at a 
distance from all buildings. The sky was bright and 
serene, the sea lulled in a profound calm, and all these 
poor people were indulging in sweet sleep, a short respite 
from their woes. In this treacherous state of things, a 
little after midnight, the whole promontory of Campala 
fell at once into the sea without any previous earthquake. 
The sea fled back before this mass towards the Golilla 
del Faro, where it carried off twenty-eight persons with 
their boats and houses; then returning with redoubled 
fury across its natural channel, flowed on the shore of 
Scylla thirty palms above its usual level and three miles 
along the coast. As it fell back again it swept away into 
the abyss 2,475 persons who were lying on the sands or in 
BOCAS cys. * 

Thinking of these things, how often at sunset have we 
come down the strait, back to Messina, Alessandro, Pietro 
and J. And as it so happened it was in coming thus 
back from Scylla on a clear summer evening that I was 
finally convinced that Homer himself never saw this strait, 
never sailed these seas or landed upon these divine shores : 
that all he wrote of them was from hearsay—those Phceni- 
cians !—the gossip of the harbour or the coast, put to 
marvellous and immortal use. For there stood Etna with 
its crown of snow and great plume of smoke across the 
crimson sky. No one who had even seen Sicily, especially 


1 From a letter by an eye-witness quoted by H. Swinburne, 
Travels in the Two Sicilies (London, 1799), iv, 293. 


12 CITIES OF SICILY 


one in search of marvels, could have missed—still less have 
forgotten—Etna. 

But Homer was blind: and Etna, like Vesuvius, may 
not have been active then. 

‘Of what is the Signore thinking ? The Signore is sad. 
He is thinking of the ee Morgana that we have seen but 
not he.”’ 

Yes, Alessandro, yes, Pietro, I am thinking of the Fata 
Morgana, but not that which you have seen, but that which 
I have seen, but not you. 

It may well be that he never sailed these seas or saw 
these shores : that some Phoenician talking in the market- 
place of the gateways of the great sea told him all he knew. 
What matter? Those blind eyes saw a vision, that divine 
spirit conceived an image which has outlasted the mere 
material and visible world, the sport of the earthquake, 
continually changed and pitilessly shattered as the brute 
earth shrinks upon that arc of fracture whose centre is 
Stromboli. All the poets, all the historians, all the geo- 
graphers follow him. Those Pheenicians, they invented 
more than the Alphabet, but it was the Greek who turned 
everything they made and knew to divine use and beauty. 

Yes, Alessandro, yes, Pietro, there was one who saw 
Fata Morgana and the greatest of all cities that have been 
or shall be, burning in the sky, and the loveliest woman 
ravished away, and the noblest of kings an old man hum- 
bled, and the greatest feats of arms. He knew the ways 
of the sea and the gateways thereof and sang of them 
and of the wanderings of the most experienced and the 
subtlest of men. And all these things are more enduring 
than these rocks and have outlasted many civilizations. 
Yet all these things exist because of him. And if he had 
not sung of these things he would have found others and 
they would have been as beautiful. And which is more 
real: your Messina which the earthquake destroys, or 
your Fata Morgana which fadés with the sun ? 

And Alessandro and Pietro answered nothing, but 
pulled on into Messina. 


a hs eee 


Fi i 


er 


CHAPTER II 
TAORMINA 


T whatever time of year I may come to Taormina, 
with the snow of the almond blossom, the flame 
of the oleander, the purple of the grape, it has the 

same incredible beauty, incredible in any land but this ; 
a beauty picturesque, rhetorical, exterior if you will, but 
overwhelming in its direct appeal and essentially dramatic, 
in its effect, as in its essence. 

With this amazing beauty Taormina itself has little 
to do. It is wholly an affair of situation. The little 
town which has scarcely a monument, except the famous 
Greco-Roman Theatre, is lodged almost like some hap- 
hazard, rudely-built nest upon the mountain ledge, lying 
a little back from the sea and some 600 feet above it. 
Behind it tower two isolated heights, the one bearing 
somewhat precariously on its summit a cluster of houses 
—the village of Mola, the other crowned by the Castle. 
The background of all this is a tumbled mass of mountain 
range, the last of the Peloritani from which one lovely 
peak, Monte Venere, stands out against the sky. 

But that is only the background of a panorama really 
incomparable and certainly the loveliest in Sicily. Before 
Taormina lies the violet sea and a coast broken by many 
a sleeping far-stretched headland: there to the north 
Capo S. Alessio, with its fort and village above it, goes 
steeply and brokenly into the sea; immediately beneath 
Taormina the lovely triple promontory of S. Andrea, with 
the small island, Isola Bella, in its arms, breaks the shore ; 
to the south the black promontory of Capo Schisdé crawls 
leanly into the Ionian. It is an incomparable riviera, and 
over all and at just the right distance, rises and reigns, 

13 


14 CITIES OF SICILY | 


supreme in majesty and awe, snow-crowned Etna stream- 
ing its vast plume of smoke, immovable, ever changing, 
multi-coloured, that lies across half the sky like a cloud, 
and, like the great volcano itself, takes on every mood 
of the day. 

It is this incomparable panorama, so clear, so luminous, 
so ‘‘classical’’ in its beauty, and yet to the seeing eye 
far more filled with mystery, with poetry, than any vague 
landscape of the North, which has given Taormina its name 
for beauty. And indeed in Taormina there is nothing else 
to do all day long but to enjoy it, and if there were you 
could do nothing but return to it, at every hour of the day, 
at every turning of the road, from the hill of the Theatre, 
from the path to Mola, from the Castle, from Monte Venere, 
in the morning when you wake, in the evening when you 
lie down ; at all times your eyes are filled with it and yet 
can never have enough. No doubt Taormina was built 
where it is because of it. 

For the Greeks beyond all other men were sensitive 
to such beauty ; they never established a city or built a 
temple or a theatre without considering it ; the landscape 
in which it stood, which it would, as it were, reveal, express 
and consecrate. There is no city of the Greeks in Sicily, 
as I know well, of which this is not true : Taormina and the 
Theatre of Taormina are only more obvious examples of 
their general custom. And here perhaps more than else- 
where their will in this has prevailed and their intention 
imposed itself upon us, certainly unused to such refine- 
ments. Time and destruction have left nothing certainly 
Greek, and almost nothing of any artistic importance in 
Taormina to distract us from the very first thoughts of its 
founders about it. There is nothing but the Theatre to 
take one’s attention from the view, and the Theatre, as 
we might have divined, only gives us that incomparable 
panorama in its most dramatic perfection. 

It is all dolce far niente in this town, really little more 
than a village, with its charming, haphazard streets, its 
exquisite, amateurish Gothic buildings as often as not in 
picturesque ruin, which can never have been serious works 
of art, one might think, but make a part of the charm of 








ALMOND BLOSSOM AT TAORMINA 
Etna in the distance 


TAORMINA 15 


the place. You wander down the street, to climb up to 
the Theatre, to spend a lazy morning there lying in the 
sun and looking at the landscape. In the afternoon you 
climb up to Mola—it is the only or almost the only walk ; 
and all the delightful but toilsome way through the podert 
filled perhaps with the snow of the almond, as the steep 
path turns, or hesitates, or offers a rest, it is to the landscape 
you turn, that marvellous vieW-of mountain and sea and 
sea-shore over which the majesty of Etna is upreared awfully 
into theinfinitesky. And gradually as one’s spirit becomes 
attuned to this genius loct, one begins to perceive its mean- 
ing, to understand or at least to feel what it is to live in 
harmony with nature—nature, mistress of all masters, 
which certainly the Greeks understood with a clear sin- 
cerity to which we are complete strangers. 

The secret of Taormina is that she is, as it were, the key 
to the landscape. Nor when I say that the Greeks who 
thus established her did so with that intention, do I forget 
that the first city, Naxos, of which Tauromenium was the 
daughter, was founded on the sea-shore. Indeed you 
may still see some foundations in the lemon grove on 
Capo Schisd, that low black tongue of lava thrust like 
a reef into the sea beyond the marina of Taormina, 
Giardini. 

You may reach Naxos as I did in about an hour on foot 
from the Catania Gate or you may drive to it out of Porta 
Messina. It lay along the S. Venera torrent not far from 
the Acesines, and the mouth of that considerable stream 
may have been its harbour, or the north bay which still 
affords goodanchorage. Thereis little to see: a few founda- 
tions in a lemon grove and portions of the wall, while not 
far away is a necropolis. In spite of this, Naxos, the site 
of Naxos, should certainly be visited, for it was the first 
Greek settlement in Sicily and for all Sicilian Greeks holy 
ground. And then in a place like Taormina where there is 
almost nothing to do and nowhere to go, one eagerly seizes 
an excuse for a walk. 

The whole of this country has been largely changed 
since Naxos was founded by a body of colonists from 
Chalcis in Eubcea in 735 B.c. That long reef of lava 


16 CITIES OF SICILY 


might seem to hint at it. The city once lay along the River 
Acesines, the modern Alcantara, from which what is now 
left of it is separated by the low delta between the torrent 
of S. Venera and the river. Thucydides, our chief if not 
our only authority in regard to the establishment of the 
Greek colonies in Sicily, represents Naxos as a purely 
Chalcidic settlement, but the very name would seem to 
attest the presence of a body of colonists from the island 
of that name, and Ephorus of Cumae calls Theocles the 
leader,an Athenian. The memory of Naxos as the earliest 
of all Greek settlements in Sicily was preserved by the 
dedication of an altar outside the city to Apollo Archegetes — 
—Apollo the Leader—the patron deity under whose 
authority the expedition had sailed. And it was a custom 
still retained long after the destruction of Naxos itself, 
that all envoys proceeding on sacred missions to Greece 
or returning from Greece to Sicily, should offer sacrifice on 
this altar.1 

Within a few years Naxos was so flourishing that she 
was able herself to send out colonists who established first 
Leontinoi, of which Theocles himself was the founder, and 
then Catana, both to the south. It is probable, though 
Thucydides says nothing of it, that Zankle (Messina) was 
also a colony of Naxos. So it certainly flourished for near 
250 years, when about 491 B.c. Hippocrates, the tyrant 
of Gela, a Dorian city on the south coast, took it, and 
seems to have reduced it to permanent subjection.” Later 
it passed into the power of the tyrants Gelon and his 
brother Hieron of Syracuse (476 B.c.). The latter, in fact, 
drove out the inhabitants both of Naxos and Catana and 
settled them at Leontini, putting fresh colonists from other 
parts into the two dispeopled cities. In 461 B.c., however, 
the exiles returned to Catana, and there is no reason to 
believe that the exiles of Naxos were less fortunate. Naxos 
was thus still a Chalcidic city when the Athenian Expedition 
was launched against Syracuse. We find her joining the 
Athenians against the great Dorian city. It was at Naxos 
that the Athenian fleet first touched after crossing the 
straits. Naxos and Catana were indeed the only Greek 


1 Thucydides, vi, 3. ? Herodotus, vii, 154. 


TAORMINA yee | 


cities in Sicily which sided with the Athenians. That 
enormous disaster was to bring the retribution we might 
suppose. With the utter destruction of the Athenians, 
Syracuse turned upon their allies. She was prevented in 
her revenge for a time by the Carthaginian terror which 
engulfed Acragas, Gela and Camarina; but that passed. 
Dionysius of Syracuse, secure at last, threw himself on the 
Chalcidic cities, and, making himself master of Naxos by 
the treachery of her general, Procles, sold all the inhabi- 
tants into slavery, razed the city to the ground, and gave 
the site and territory to the neighbouring Sikelian bar- 
barians (403 B.c.). Naxos never rose again, and it would 
seem that it was in fact the Sikeli who finally formed 
the settlement on the hill of Taurus which we know as 
Taormina. This befell about 396 B.c. About forty years 
later (358 B.c.), Andromachus, the father of the historian 
Timeus, gathered together the Naxian exiles scattered in 
various parts of Sicily and established them in the Sikelian 
town on Mount Taurus, which thus rose to be a Greek city, 
the true successor of Naxos. The city was called Tauro- 
menium, and Andromachus was its tyrant. His rule was 
mild and he alone was not expelled by Timoleon, whom 
indeed he was the first to welcome, when he made his 
expedition to free Syracuse and Sicily from these tyran- 
nies (345 B.C.). 

The site of Naxos was never again inhabited, but the 
altar and shrine of Apollo Archegetes remained and marked 
the spot certainly till 36 B.c. 

As for the history of Tauromenium, it is singularly 
uninteresting. It passed, after the death of Androma- 
chus, into the power of Agathocles, King of Syracuse, who 
expelled Timzus, the historian. It then fell into the power 
of Tyndarion, a domestic despot, who helped to invite 
Pyrrhus into Sicily and marched with him upon Syracuse. 
A few years later it came into the power of Hieron of 
Syracuse and it remained a mere fortress and outpost of 
that city till the whole of Sicily was reduced to a Roman 
province, when its chief asset seems to have been the 
natural strength of its position, It is with the Empire it 

1 Thucydides, vii, 57, 


18 CITIES OF SICILY 


begins to appear as what it is to-day, a pleasure resort, 
and, as such, a place of some consideration. It was 
celebrated for its wine, and Juvenal speaks of its mullet. 

It is natural to ruminate among the stones of Naxos, — 
beside the River Acesines, in seeking the shrine of Apollo, 
upon the history of Naxos; but up in Taormina, that 
rickety, delightful Bella Vista of a town, anything so 
formidable seems quite out of place. There the past counts 
for very little, memory is a blank, the day and night 
are enough and the eye is not satisfied with seeing. 

And yet I don’t know. Was I forgetting that famous 
Theatre? No. The Theatre is well enough, interesting 
enough, but one comes to use it after all chiefly as the fore- 
ground, or the frame of that incomparable panorama. 
And who shall say it was not just for that it was intended ? 
I certainly will maintain it was. 

One climbs up to it with the rest of the visitors to Taormina 
inevitably in the morning, at first with the intention of 
seeing it. For many it is the first theatre of the kind 
they have seen, and it is justly one of the most celebrated 
ruins in Sicily. It is built for the most part of brick and 
is therefore probably of Roman date, but the plan and the 
arrangement are Greek rather than Roman, and no doubt 
what we see is the ruin of a Roman building upon Greek 
foundations. In size it is only smaller than the theatre 
at Syracuse, and though here far the greater part of the 
seats have disappeared and only a grassy amphitheatre is 
left, the wall surrounding the theatrum remains and the 
proscenium with the back wall of the scena, though some- 
what amended, is here alone in Sicily preserved almost 
complete. It was, so the decorative fragments which 
remain seem to establish, of the Corinthian order and of 
a late time. 

But one soon ceases to care about such archeological 
facts, caught in the perfection of that incredible panorama. 
In that ecstasy of light and marvel of landscape, the hours 
pass and one lives in a world not realized or realizable. 

This was the genius of the Greeks—to make perfect 
imperfection : this was their art, to reach not the universal 
but the absolute. Consider then the ritual for instance of 


TAORMINA 19 


the Gdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles upon such a stage as 
this. The tragedy unfolds itself there in the full golden 
light before that open colonnade which is the scena, through 
which was seen that violet sea, that incomparable sea- 
shore, the awful mass, the majesty, the height and the 
snows of smoking Etna. As the light fails the tragedy 
deepens, and, as it draws to its tremendous close, the sunset, 
little by little, stains ever a deeper and a deeper crimson 
the pure snows of the volcano till the self-slaughtered 
Queen, the self-blinded King pass into the darkness which 
only the stars and the far breathing mountain illumine or 
mitigate. 

Yes, they and they alone knew how to seize the thousand 
opportunities of the Creator, to make of difficulty a weapon 
of victory, to reconcile man and his arts with God and 
with nature. You think it wonderful that Rome piled 
stone on stone and made an arena where agony and death 
should be a spectacle for the multitude ? You think it 
wonderful that the Middle Age thrust its buttresses up into 
the clouds and under the high embowed roof made a dark- 
ness in which the soul might creep forth and pray ? You 
think it wonderful that the Renaissance built with space and 
light and made a reasonable house of praise ? But the 
Greeks, when they built, brought the whole landscape 
into their sanctuary, and in building a temple consecrated 
the hills about it: they contrived by their genius that the 
most wonderful mountains of God should make a back- 
ground for their tragedies in which man in the grip of 
fate struggled to be free. They brought the sound of the 
sea into their verse and the sun into their chorus; of the 
gesture of the hills they took tribute and the wind was but 
one of their voices ; they wreathed their cities with flowers 
and their great reward was a crown of wild olive. 

Yes, it is good to lie in the Theatre of Taormina. Just 
there one comes to perceive, and in a larger way than before 
the Parthenon, the genius of the Greeks for harmony : it is 
a secret they have not passed on. 

' Little or nothing else of their time remains in Taormina : 
the vestiges of what is said to have been a Greek temple 
in the modernized church of S. Pancrazio outside Porta 


20 CITIES OF SICILY 


Messina do not amount to much, and the ‘‘ Naumachia ”’ 
in the garden below the Hotel Naumachia is Roman and 
not very interesting—two large Roman cisterns, possibly 
parts of a Bath and a long niched wall. Far better worth 
seeing is the Little Theatre, probably Roman, by the 
church of S. Caterina near the Palazzo Corvaja just above 
the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, which was the ancient 
Forum. A good deal remains of this building, including 
four rows of tiled seats, parts of the stage and covered- 
in passages and entrances. 

All these together will scarcely fill an afternoon, and 
indeed it is not for such things one comes to Taormina ; 
but they are part of the distractions and curiosities of a 
place which is full of the vestiges of many periods, none of 
which with the exception of the Theatre is of any real 
importance. 

Taormina in truth is not a place for sightseeing but for 
dolce far niente, for basking in the sun between a stroll 
and a stroll, always with that marvellous panorama before 
one, of which who could tire, changing as it does with every 
mood of the sky, with every hour of the day. At first, 
maybe, you are impatient because there is so little to 
see, so little, that is, in the way of antiquities, works of 
art, buildings, churches, museums. But as day follows 
day, little by little you fall into the mood of the place 
and are content to do nothing but to enjoy the sun if it be 
winter, to wander into a church here, a garden there, and 
to learn by heart the moods that Etna takes on and seems 
to impose on the whole landscape. That is the secret of 
Taormina, of its perennial attraction: Etna rises up before 
it and is by far its most overwhelming and dominating 
presence. That landscape, the glorious panorama, what 
would it be without Etna: something not very different 
after all from what many another coast in the Mediter- 
ranean affords. It is Etna that lends it its mystery, its 
extraordinary fascination, not without a certain awe in its 
beauty. 

I remember very well the first time I came to Taormina. 
It was a grey day at the beginning of February. In the 
late afternoon light there was nothing to be seen and I went 


TAORMINA 21 


to bed almost determined to go on to Syracuse on the 
morrow. By some undeserved good fortune I woke, I 
know not why, about six next morning, and, my bed 
facing the window of the room, on first opening my eyes I 
beheld very high up in the sky a rosy cloud which I watched 
with ever increasing wonder. I was watching the sun rise 
upon the snows of Etna. 

Though the sunrise upon Etna is certainly the most 
magical of the delights of Taormina, it always seems to 
me to be of a piece with the rest. They certainly have 
something of its surprise and should be enjoyed almost 
as restfully. The almonds in February, for instance, 
without a leaf, like trees spellbound suddenly drenched 
with beauty, snow-white for the most part with here 
and there a deep pink—but who may know all their 
colours, so various they be, if you will but look at 
them. 

And then the palaces—so small and so entrancing, they 
seem as magical in their charm as the almond blossom. 
You would not go out to see them, but they are there 
for your walk, the Palazzo Corvaja at one end of the 
Corso, the Palazzo Ciampoli with its flight of steps at the 
other, the Palazzo S. Stefano by the Catania Gate, and many 
others, among which, though it is not a palace, I will 
include the Torre Medioevale outside Porta Catania. They 
have little or no importance in themselves, but are part of 
the charm of the place. 

Not nearly so much can be said for the churches, which 
are without distinction, but the convents, or rather the 
ex-convents, are certainly not to be missed: the Badia 
Vecchia above the Ciampoli Palace, with its lovely ruined 
Gothic windows, its clustering columns—Badia Vecchia 
gratia plena; the Convent of S$. Caterina, now a private 
villa ; and the Convent of S. Domenico, now an hotel, with 
their cloisters full of the spring and their gardens: no, 
Taormina cannot spare them. 

And it is the same with Mola. I suppose no one has 
ever been three days in Taormina without climbing up to 
Mola, It is the one walk of the place and a very lovely 
one. You pass out beside the Carmine or S. Francesco da 

3 : 


22 CITIES OF SICILY 


Paola near Porta Catania and presently find yourself on an 
ever steepening rough-hewn path between hedges of Indian 
fig and open terraced foderi planted with olives, with the 
vine, with corn, and everywhere, and not least between the 
stones, a riot of wild growth, of wild flowers. On the way 
you are almost sure to meet a herd of the goats of Taormina, 
rather large in size, and the boy herdsman seated on a stone 
by the path, maybe trying his pipe—a truly Theocritan 
scene. It matters not at all whether you ever reach Mola 
for it has nothing to offer you but the same panorama— | 
a little wider perhaps—which, in fact, is Taormina: 
it is the way that enchants you, and the play of sun and 
cloud on the snowfields of Etna and the earliest spring— 
spring caught in a leafless brake, that, if it be early Febru- 
ary, you are sure to find there. In its own kind it is quite 
exquisite, this climbing path, and out of Syracuse I know 
of no better pleasure in Sicily than a morning there with 
Theocritus. 

If you take the trouble to reach Mola you can return 
by another path and climb, on the way, up to the Castello 
and so on by S. Maria della Rocca back to Taormina. 
That would be a little strenuous for Taormina, for the spirit 
of Taormina, and of course to climb Monte Venere is far 
more fatiguing—an affair of donkeys, I suppose.t No, 
the genius of Taormina has nothing boisterous or energetic 
about it. It is a desecration that tennis courts should - 
have been built in a place mercifully preserved from all 
the more banal delights of the Riviera. Taormina ought 
perhaps to be reserved for people who, like Theocritus, 
are a little weary and bored by a dying and often brutal 
civilization, and are able, if not to create as he did, at least 
to enjoy, a far more delightful world of the imagination— 


1 Far better to motor to Savoca beyond Capo S. Andrea—the 
road is a magnificent corniche all the way—aud to visit there the 
abandoned “‘ Norman” convent of SS. Pietro and Paolo, a mag- 
nificent building of red brick, quite without equal on this Eastern 
coast: a work of the Saracens in Norman service. It dates from 
the twelfth century (1171-2) as a Greek inscription over the entrance 
records and was the work of Gerardo il Franco. Within there are 
three naves with semicircular apses, the curious cupolaed roof is 
very interesting. 


TAORMINA 28 


the only world that will endure or where one can be 
completely happy. For such people Taormina may be 
a paradise, for they are content with little, if that 
little include quietness and this harmonious garden 
in the sun. 


CHAPTER III 


THE SKIRTS OF ETNA: ACI REALE AND 
CATANIA 


“T iese joyous descent from Taormina to Giardini— 
joyous in its so various beauty, and surprising in 
its lovely opportunities of farewell—does not 
prepare you at all for the strange and sinister kingdom 
you enter when you have crossed the Alcantara—the king- 
dom of Etna. 

Something of what you are to find, the merest hint of it, 
you receive every now and again, even in Taormina, when- 
ever that lean black reef of lava by which the ruins of 
Naxos lie, happens to catch your eye; but I, certainly, 
had not realized what the country was like that Etna had 
made its own—a landscape everywhere marred and broken 
by black torrents and fields and ridges of lava, everywhere 
blackened by fire and torn by earthquake, everywhere 
under the domination, the dread and the shadow, of the 
volcano. Etna, in all its majesty and beauty as seen 
from Taormina, gives you no inkling of the truth. 

You come upon it first, if you take that ride in an 
automobile to which you will certainly be persuaded in 
Taormina, to see the lavas of the last eruption of a few 
years ago. You come down first to Naxos and then turn 
up the Alcantara valley which divides the last of the 
Peloritani mountains from Etna itself. Your way lies 
through orange and lemon groves, through the sunshine 
that glorifies the almond blossom, and up the ever-mounting, — 
ever-winding road through Francavilla to the little city 
of Castiglione, clustered on a towering rock, that numbers 
12,000 inhabitants though it looks like an eyrie for eagles, 
2,000 feet or more in the air. Through the woods you go, 

24 


THE SKIRTS OF ETNA 25 


Over many a moraine, till suddenly at a turn of the way 
you enter the kingdom of Etna. The whole world is 
changed, and before you lies a darkling landscape, as of 
the moon, utterly desolate and inhuman, without a tree 
or a flower or a weed, where only the wind is at home ; 
even the sun seems to have gone out, in a cloudless sky. 
Through this black, dismal landscape you pass on to Lingua- 
glossa and through it you return to the Alcantara valley, 
and the world we know. 

It is, though less brutally, into this same Etnean King- 
dom you come when, crossing the Alcantara, you pass on 
your way to Aci Reale and Catania. Immediately you 
enter it something sinister stains the sunlight ; the Indian 
figs, which everywhere abound, look evilas well as grotesque; 
and though the vines and the blossoming almonds make 
a sunshine, a shadow seems to have fallen over everything, 
a spirit of darkness at any rate, that you find it hard to 
account for. 

This territory, which strikes you at once by its melancholy 
and forbidding aspect, where the light is often palpably 
obscured by the cloud and fog in the upper air, is well 
defined. You enter it when you cross the Alcantara ; 
you leave it and quite as suddenly when you pass out of 
the ragged environs of Catania, and the great plain of 
Leontinoi, or as it is called to-day, the Piana di Catania, 
opens before you, a green mirror full of light in winter 
and spring, a shield of gold all through the rest of the year. 

The influence of Etna seems to lie lightest on those 
little towns upon the now lofty coast, Aci Reale, Aci 
Castello, and many another “ Aci’ which alone now mark 
the course of that lost stream, the Acis. They are on the 
edge of the sea—and what a sea! And yet I don’t know. 
Does not the very legend of Acis and Galatea bear witness 
to the sinister and dark spirit which broods over this 
landscape in spite of the sea, in spite of all that radiant 
sun and sky ? 

Acis, the son of Faunus and Symaethis, was loved by 
the nymph Galatea; and so Polyphemus the Cyclops, 
jealous of him, crushed him under a huge rock, and his 
blood, gushing forth from under, was changed by the nymph 


26 CITIES OF SICILY 


into the stream that bore his name. What was Faunus 
but some faun of the woods, the sylvan genius of the upper 
valleys ? What was Symaethis but the nymph of the 
Symaethos, the river that still bears her name and that 
enters the sea just south of Catania? What was Poly- 
phemus but one of the innumerable craters of Etna— 
Polyphemus the one-eyed giant, hurling forth rocks and 
stones, awkward and unaccountable in his brutal rough- 
ness ? And what was Galatea but a sea-nymph, one of 
Nereus’ daughters—the delicate milk-white foam of the 
sea, the clear and graceful wave breaking in lace-like foam 
upon the beach or dancing among the black lava rocks ? 
No wonder Polyphemus loved her and was always running 
after her and seeking her embraces. But she spurned 
him and took Acis into her arms, into her bosom. Yet 
the Cyclops loved her with endless wooing, and she could 
not tell which was stronger in her, her hate of the Cyclops 
or her love for Acis. So it befell. 

But where are to-day ‘‘ the sacred waters of Acis,”’ as 
Theocritus calls them in his very first idyll, the one that 
begins with a music like the whispering pine it describes: 


‘Add ti t6 piOtoucua xal d altuc, aladde, thva.. . 


Solinus speaks of the extreme coldness of its waters, 
which might seem to suggest the Fiumefreddo not far 
from the Alcantara. But if Acium, now Aci Reale, got 
its name from the stream, it was certainly further south 
and there is little doubt that it should be identified with 
the Fiume di Jaci which in fact rises under a rock of lava 
and runs its short course to the sea by Aci Reale. You may 
climb down to its mouth by a steep path called Ja Scalazza. 

Aci Reale is a fairly pleasant place to stay in, with many 
delightful excursions about it—to Aci S. Antonio, with its 
wonderful vegetation, and the other Acis and even to the 
Trecastagni. But owing to the eruption and earthquake 
of 1693, which entirely destroyed the town, there is noth- 
ing of antiquity to be found there except the Pozzo di 
S. Venera and the remains of a Roman bath about two 
miles away. The church of S. Sebastiano has, however, a 
fine baroque fagade dating from 1705. Far better worth 


VNINYOVL WOT VNIGA 








I 


THE SKIRTS OF ETNA 27 


seeing is the view from the Belvedere, the public garden 
which is magnificent both toward Etna and along the coast. 

The fishermen of Aci Reale are a particularly fine race, 
and I got a couple of them to sail and row me in barca 
along the coast all the way from Aci Reale past the Rocks 
of the Cyclops and the supposed Port of Ulysses (Ognina) 
to Catania. It was a most wonderful voyage, and as we 
started early and the morning was fair I was able to visit 
the now half-ruined Grotta delle Palumbe—a large stalac- 
tite cave to the north of Aci Reale before setting out 
southward. 

The coast is high here, a vast sloping tableland, high 
above the sea. The view of Etna all the way was most 
wonderful. Its real interest, however, began when the 
Rocks of the Cyclops came in sight, and, beyond, the 
picturesque medizval town of Aci Castello. 

The Rocks of the Cyclops—but is this indeed the fabled 
site of the encounter between Polyphemus and Odysseus ? 
Tradition seems to say so: Euripides in his delightful 
satire, The Cyclops, Virgil in the third book of the ned, 
Ovid in the Metamorphoses, all maintain it. But if this 
is the place, then we may be even more sure than before 
that Homer never saw Sicily, for he cannot, he above all, 
have stood right under Etna and have never spoken of 
it. But there is more in it than that. 

To begin with, Odysseus’ adventure with the Cyclops 
takes place immediately after his meeting with the Lotus 
Eaters, and immediately before his visit to the A‘olian Isle. 

In the Odyssey, Book ix, 103, he leaves the land of the 
Lotus Eaters: ‘‘So they (his comrades) went on board 
straightway and sat down upon the benches and, sitting 
well in order, smote the grey sea with their oars, Thence 
we sailed on, grieved at heart, and we came to the Land of 
the Cyclopes.’’ The adventure with Polyphemus follows, 
and the Book ends with the refrain: ‘‘ Thence we sailed 
on, grieved at heart, glad to have escaped death though 
we had lost our dear comrades.’’ Book x opens with 
these words: ‘‘ Then to the olian Isle we came where 
dwelt AZolus, son of PAEPOS, dear to the immortal gods, 
on a floating island. 


28 CITIES OF SICILY 


Now it is generally admitted that the Lotus Eaters dwelt 
in Tunisia, and that the AZolian Isle is one of the Zolian 
islands. It remains then to discover how, if the Cyclopes 
dwelt beneath Etna, Odysseus reached the Afolian Isle 
without passing through the Strait of Messina, without, 
that is, passing Scylla and Charybdis. Unless indeed he 
sailed right round Sicily, as, in fact, Eneas wonderfully 
did, and all before a north wind ! 

Of course the usual answer to this is, that, as the voyage 
of Odysseus took place in and out of fairyland, its geography 
is insoluble. But I for one believe in the geography of 
the Odyssey ; I like to think of it as a genuine description of 
the Western Mediterranean, completely logical in its pro- 
gress, and as having nothing to do with fairyland at all. 
If those who think as I do are right, then the site of the 
encounter with Polyphemus cannot have been under Etna. 
Where else might it have taken place? Well, if the 
Cyclopes are the personification of volcanoes or craters, 
then there is at least one place as likely as Etna upon the 
Mediterranean coasts which might have served Homer’s 
purpose. That spot is to be found, as Victor Bérard 4 
has shown, in the Gulf of Pozzuoli in the Phlegrzan Fields, 
to the west of Naples. 

I cannot here enter into Victor Bérard’s minute and logical 
argument concerning the reality of the voyage as described 
by Homer. I must content myself with referring the 
reader to one of the most fascinating Homeric studies that 
has ever been undertaken. Here it will be enough to point 
out, to those who are ready to disown the fairyland hypo- 
thesis, the initial difficulty of the site of Etna for the adven- 
ture with Polyphemus. Of course those who accept the 
fairyland notion have no interest in the matter, since every- 
thing that happens to Odysseus is then without reality 
or meaning—‘‘ tutto é una frasca.”’ 

But those who would see in the foundations of the 

1 Les Phéniciens et L’Odysée, par Victor Bérard (Armand Colin, 
1903), 2 tomes. The book has long been out of print, but a new 
edition is promised as part of M. Bérard’s larger opus dealing with 
the Odyssey. On the other hand, there is Samuel Butler, who 


maintained that the Odyssey was nothing but a givo round Sicily 
(The Authoress of the Odyssey). 


THE SKIRTS OF ETNA 29 
ee, 

Odyssey the quite true experience of Phcenician sailors, 
misinterpreted certainly and perhaps symbolized, but 
essentially true, the question of the site of the adventure 
with the Cyclops should have some interest. It should 
please them to find that the Neapolitan site offers a much 
clearer parallel to that described by Homer than this 
under Etna. 

In the first place, there is no island here under Etna 
which might serve for that where Odysseus harboured ; 
a wooded isle, wild, and the abode of many goats, neither 
close to nor far from the coast, and able to harbour twelve 
ships—unless, indeed, it be the Isola d’Aci, the largest of 
the rocks here which is about 2,300 feet in circumference 
and about 230 feet high. But this is supposed to be one 
of the rocks hurled at Odysseus and not the island of goats 
where he left his ships. 

In the Gulf of Pozzuoli, on the other hand, we have, not 
far from shore, the Island of Nisida which opens towards 
the south-west to form a circular harbour. There, too, 
are isolated rocks rising out of the sea which well represent 
those hurled by the giant. 

However this may really be, universal antiquity accepted 
Etna as the home of Polyphemus. Not only Euripides, 
Virgil and Ovid, but Theocritus also, describe him there, 
or ever Odysseus came, and not alone in the exquisite 
eleventh idyll, but in the sixth and seventh also, sighing 
for Galatea: 


"Q devud Taddteva, tl tov pidgove? dnoBdddne. . 


So long a tradition, quite apart from the obvious interest 
of the spot, draws one to these Rocks of the Cyclops. The 
largest of these is the Isola d’Aci, immediately opposite 
Aci Trezza, which belongs to-day to the University of 
Catania, to which it was given by the Marchese Gravina 
for the study of marine biology. Permission to visit the 
island must be obtained from the University. It is a 
basaltic formation in which are many caverns worn by 
the sea such as the Grotta del Monaco, and on the south 
side some prehistoric tombs may be seen. To the south 
of this island, where I suppose Odysseus left his ships, lie 


30 CITIES OF SICILY 


the Rocks of the Cyclops properly so called, of all sizes 
and shapes, The largest is a great horned pinnacle rising 
up from a broad circular base and seemingly built of 
roughly-hewn columns. They have little more than a 
geological interest, apart from their picturesqueness 
grouped thus off the coast with the beautiful headland and 
ruined castle of Aci Castello beyond, and smoking Etna 
towering over all. 

At Aci Castello the lava-formed coast becomes quite low, 
and there, beyond many a bay, lies Catania, really to the 
south of Etna and by no means, as it is generally described, 
between Etna and the sea. Giarre and Riposto really 
hold that position, while Catania as the crow flies is no 
nearer to the summit of Etna than is Taormina, 

One of these bays, that of Ognina, has been identified 
with the Portus Ulixis of Virgil. 

‘“‘ Meanwhile,’ says AZneas recounting his voyage to 
Dido, after the flight from burning Troy, ‘‘ Meanwhile 
at sundown the wind failed our weary company, and in 
ignorance of the way we drift up to the Cyclopes’ coast. 
There lies a harbour safe from the winds’ approach and 
spacious in itself, but near at hand Etna thunders with 
terrifying crashes, and now hurls forth to the sky a black 
cloud smoking with ashes, now...’ There in the woods 
the Trojan fugitives find Achzemenides, the luckless com- 
rade of much-enduring Ulysses, who has passed by not 
long before. He, it seems, though Homer knows nothing 
of it, was left in the Cyclops’ cave, and escaping—we 
are not told how—but still in horrible fear of the 
Cyclopes, he has hidden in the woods till he is rescued 
by ARneas. 

This then, according to Virgil, was the place where 
Ulysses, having left all the ships save his own moored at 
the island, himself landed and made his way to the cave 
of Polyphemus. Well, I don’t believe it. Virgil, who is 
as capable as Racine of calling the sea la plaine liquide, — 
says this harbour is safe from the winds’ approach, He 
never saw it at all or at any rate not in a scirocco. He 
knew nothing of the sea—like the Roman he was, or the | 
Mantuan for that matter. 


THE SKIRTS OF ETNA 31 


And now, we drew near to Catania, her domes and towers 
glistened in the sun. 

“ Certatim socii feriunt mare et aequora verrunt,’’? and 
soon I was on the quay, and, after a bottle of wine, 
said good-bye to the sailors of Aci Reale and saw them 
presently depart. Then I made my way into the richest 
and, save Palermo, the largest, but quite the least attractive 
city in Sicily. 

Except that it is the most usual base for the ascent of 
Etna, I see no reason at all for a visit to Catania, with its 
noise, its dirt, its trams, its baroque churches and its 
complete absence of interest or delight. 

Povera Catania! So often destroyed and always threat- 
ened by Etna, of whose lava she is built, it is no wonder 
that she has nothing to offer the traveller in search of 
Theocritus. 

For Catania is altogether a city of to-day, prosperous, 
vulgar and, so far as the traveller is concerned, better 
left alone. The trouble is that it is not easy to give her 
the go-by. She is by far the best base for an ascent or 
an exploration of Etna, and she holds the key of the railway 
between Palermo or Girgenti on the one hand, and Syracuse 
or Taormina on the other. For this reason it is a pity 
there is not a really first-rate hotel which might attract 
visitors in place of antiquities or works of art. 

Here I think Catania has perhaps failed to make the 
most of an opportunity.} 

If so—and after all the strangers’ season is very short 
—it is the only thing in which she has failed. For I 
think what strikes you most in the town is its character 
—its opportunism and persistence. With the most un- 
fortunate and insecure situation in the whole island, 
Catania has made itself by far the richest city in Sicily. 


1 The opportunity I have in mind is this: most visitors to Sicily 
go from Syracuse to Girgenti, or from Girgenti to Syracuse direct 
by train. The journey by auto costs something like twenty pounds. 
At present the journey by train takes eleven hours. Nearly every 
one puts up with this very tiring and uncomfortable piece of travel 
because he is sure of a good hotel at Syracuse and at Girgenti. If 
Catania could offer us a really attractive, clean hotel, we should all 
break these journeys there. 


82 CITIES OF SICILY 


Always threatened and continually half-destroyed by arms, 
by earthquake, by eruption, it has never succumbed. It 
was so in antiquity, it has been so ever since. Dionysius 
of Syracuse almost destroyed it and sold its inhabitants 
as Slaves because, over-persuaded by Alcibiades, it admitted 
and aided the Athenians in the Sicilian Expedition. Catania 
rose again only to fall into the hands of the Carthaginians 
after the Syracusan naval defeat immediately outside the 
port. There followed an eruption of Etna. In spite of 
three such disasters within a single decade, Catania con- 
tinued to exist. 

It is with the same pertinacity she has always faced 
Etna. At least since 396 B.c., she has been continually 
threatened, her territory overwhelmed, and often herself 
half destroyed by earthquake and eruption; but she has 
persisted, she is there, and not only there but alive as no 
other city in Sicily is. Notably in 121 B.c. in 1169, and 
in 1669, Etna half overwhelmed her with molten lava that 
remained red-hot for years. Nevertheless she lived, and 
continues with an energy not only surprising in itself 
but most of all in Sicily. 

With a geographical situation and a natural harbour 
finer than anything Catania can boast and with a tradition 
second to that of no other city in the Mediterranean, 
Syracuse is to-day little more than that original encamp- 
ment on the Island of Ortygia. Her magnificent port, 
though it commands two seas, is largely deserted. It is 
Catania which, after two thousand years of enmity, has 
humbled her at last. 

Is it the opposition, the ever-present threat of Etna, 
that has thus excited in Catania so lively a reaction? Or 
does she draw, like her orchards and her gardens, a new 
life from that volcanic soil? Does she breathe at the feet 
of Polyphemus some life-enhancing air that fills her with 
so mastering a spirit ? 

Certainly the life of Catania is amazing. The people 
shout and whistle and sing in the streets as though to 
express or relieve themselves from some formidable energy 
which seems to possess them. Amid palms, cacti, 
agaves and hedges and plantations of prickly pear which 





RY 


Army Mos. 


2 


LEMONS 





: er. a> 
a} yet te 


im 





THE SKIRTS OF ETNA 33 


alone grows actually in the lava, amid lemon groves and 
orange groves in the little valleys between the lava ridges, 
she stands actually on the lava itself which has been levelled 
by her labour and of which for the most she herself and 
all that is hers is built. 

Unlike any other Sicilian city she lies open to the sun, 
divided into two parts by the broad, straight Via Etnea 
some two miles long, through which all her life flows back- 
wards and forwards and passes into the scarcely lesser 
streets which cross it at right angles to end in the sea or 
in the mighty staircase of Etna. All these streets seem 
always to be crowded with people, with trams, with drays 
Jaden with sulphur, with gaily painted carts full of oranges 
or lemons or lemon skins or earthenware jars; with 
bars that are themselves full of smartest Catanian youth, 
vulgarly dressed in what are fondly supposed to be London 
fashions, shining with patent leather boots, with rings, 
with watch-chains and jewellery, and eating ices of in- 
numerable sorts and colours and shapes and sizes, or 
drinking the black coffee that is brewed in huge white 
metal machines and drawn off through a little tap. 

The Piazza del Duomo in which the Via Etnea begins 
has a little more dignity perhaps. In the midst, an 
Egyptian obelisk of granite which once stood in the Roman 
amphitheatre of Catania has been upreared characteristi- 
cally upon the back of an antique elephant of lava, the 
symbol of the city, by Vaccarini, the native architect of 
the eighteenth century, and goes to form the Fontana dell’ 
Elefante. 

The Duomo itself has little of interest left toit. Origin- 
ally a building of Roger I in 1092, it has been ruined by 
successive earthquakes between I169 and 1693, and is 
now a reconstruction by Vaccarini in 1736. The only 
ancient parts of the building are the three apses and a 
part of the crossing. The facade is baroque with antique 
columns of granite from the ancient theatre. 

Within, the most interesting things are the Aragon 
tombs of the fourteenth century in the sanctuary, and the 
choir stalls there, inlaid with the legend of S. Agatha. 
Against the second pilaster, on the right on entering, is 


34 CITIES OF SICILY 


the tomb of Vincenzo Bellini, the musician. A line from 
his famous opera, Somnambula : 


“Ah, non credea mirarti st presto estinto, o fiore 1” 


brings that divine aria to one’s mind with, to mine at 
least, the clear and simple voice of Galli Curci. 

In the Chapel on the right of the sanctuary is the tomb 
of S. Agatha, who has taken the place of Galatea as the 
protectress of the city. . Her festival is celebrated on the 
5th February, when her treasury is opened. Here is the 
silver reliquary, designed by Giovanni di Bartolo of Siena 
and made at Limoges, a bust of the saint, containing her 
head, and the golden crown set with precious stones that 
is said to have been presented to the saint by our Richard 
Coeur de Lion, a fine example, one is told, of the art of 
the twelfth century, together with many other such gifts. 

The other buildings in Catania really worth seeing are 
the convent and church of S. Niccola, an enormous baroque 
building in the highest part of the city ; the Biscari Palace 
in the same style, which contains a museum, especially 
notable for its collection of ancient Greek coins and which 
has been famous for over two hundred years; and the 
church of Santo Carcere, the holy prison of S. Agatha, 
whose doorway, taken from the Cathedral after the earth- 
quake of 1169, is a very fine piece of Norman work. This 
church stands over the place where S. Agatha was martyred, 
and within you may see her cell and the print of her foot 
in a piece of lava. 

S. Agatha is the powerful and famous protectress of 
the city of Catania. Many times the Catanians assert 
she has saved the city from Etna, and her festival of 5th 
February is still one of the most picturesque ceremonies 
remaining in the island. She was a noble Sicilian lady 
of great beauty, martyred under the Emperor Decius in 
251, a victim—so it is said—to the cruelty and the lust 
of Quintianus, governor of Sicily, who, when she refused 
him, first cut off her breasts and then rolled her naked 


over live coals mixed with broken potsherds. At this — 


awful cost to her body she is said to have preserved 
her body’s virginity. It might seem impossible to believe 


es A 8 te a | 


~ a on 


THE SKIRTS OF ETNA 35 


that such things could befall in the height of the Roman 
administration: but S. Agatha’s name appears upon 
the diptych of the Canon of the Mass, and I suppose would 
not be there unless her acts were for the most part authentic. 
Moreover one is obliged to remember that the Romans 
were the one European people who publicly enjoyed the 
spectacle of pain. 

Thus you may see Catania; and wandering through 
these busy streets and recalling S. Agatha, really never 
realize or remember that Catania was a Greek city founded 
in the eighth century B.c. There is certainly no sign of 
it above ground. 

But Catana as she was then called, was, in fact, of Chal- 
cidic origin, founded from the neighbouring city of Naxos 
immediately after the establishment of Leontinoi. Her 
history largely follows that of her founder city. It was, 
however, Alcibiades who lured her to her ruin when he 
made that famous speech of which no record remains and 
persuaded her to side with Athens in that most fatal 
expedition against Syracuse (415 B.C.) 

Among her guests of Greek days was the poet Stesichorus, 
the contemporary of Sappho and Alcaeus, who died here 
at the age of eighty in 556 B.c. He was one of the nine 
chiefs of lyric poetry recognized by antiquity. It was 
said that just after his birth, a creature of the air, a night- 
ingale from somewhere, settled secretly on his lips and 
began its clear song, while Antipater of Sidon, writing 
his epitaph, says, ‘‘ Stesichorus the vast, immeasurable 
voice of the Muse, was buried in Catana’s fiery land, he 
in whose breast, as telleth the philosopher Pythagoras, 
Homer’s soul lodged again.’’ Isocrates tells us that, 
““ Helen of Troy displayed her power to the poet Stesichorus. 
Having found some fault with her at the beginning of 
his poem, the Helen, he went away [from the performance] 
blind, and then, when realizing the cause of his misfortune, 
he composed what is called the Palinode or Recantation, 
she restored him his sight.” 

As a worker of miracles, Helen makes a charming 
sister to S. Agatha. 

There were other famous men in Greek Catana besides 


36 CITIES OF SICILY 


Stesichorus. Andron of Catana was the first to introduce 
dancing to accompany the flute, we are told by Athenaeus ; 
but far more famous than he were the “ Pii Fratres,”’ 
Amphinomus and Anapias, who, during a great eruption 
of Etna, left all their property to be destroyed while they 
carried off their aged parents on their shoulders. So great 
did their virtue seem to the Gods that the lava stream 
itself is said to have parted and flowed aside so as not to 
harm them. Statues were erected in their honour, and 
the place of their burial was known as the ‘‘ Campus 
Piorum’’; their figures appear on the coins of Catana. 
But what are we to think of the Cantanesi if this action 
was considered so exceptional ? 

Thus the modern city of S. Agatha becomes one with 
the old Greek foundation. Not a vestige of that Greek 
city which Stesichorus and Andron and the Pii Fratres 
knew remains, so far as is known, above or below ground. 
Earthquake and eruption seem to have disposed of it. 
But you may find fragments of its Roman successor which 
have been excavated in the manner of Herculaneum. 

The most important of these are the remains of the 
theatre and amphitheatre in Piazza Stesichoro, which 
seem to belong to the age of Augustus. The former was 
still perfect in the eleventh century when it was destroyed 
by the Norman Count Roger in order to adorn his new 
Cathedral. Close by you may still see beneath the lava 
the Odeium. Fragments also remain of the Baths and an 
Aqueduct destroyed in the eruption of 1669. 

But Catania thinks as little of these, if that be possible, 
as we think of Roman London. However, she still has 
faith in S, Agatha who, no doubt, as the learned will assure 
us, is the successor of, and has much in common with, 
Catania’s pagan protectress Galatea : Have they not both 
three ‘‘a’’s in their names ? | 


CHAPTER IV 
ETNA 


S you look on Etna from Taormina, transfigured 
A in the early morning, or fading in the evening 

light, subject all day long to every mood of the 
sky, and at night a lovely ghost amid the constellations ; 
as you gaze up at it from Catania at sunset like a golden 
altar lighted with fire from heaven; or, as you think in 
farewell, you turn at Lentinoi and see it rising in one exquisite 
unbroken line from the sea; or, again, unexpectedly, when 
you catch sight of it at Syracuse, from the stones of Epipole, 
an ethereal pyramid of snow; you might think it a vision, 
a mountain in a dream, its beauty too perfect and too 
complete for anything wholly of this world. 

It must have been so the ancients saw it, understanding. 
it even less than I do, but, even as I, unable to forget 
it, its beauty filling their minds with awe as they sought in 
their hearts for its meaning and the reason of its being. 

So they cover it with stories, some beautiful, some 
terrible, but all as it were interpretations of its beauty 
or its power: Galatea laughs about its feet at Polyphemus, 
that one-eyed giant, awkward, unkempt and brutal, who 
will one day rise up and crush with his rocks her lover, 
Acis. That exquisite idyll, told with so consummate a 
grace by Theocritus, and translated, as it were, by Ovid, 
might seem, rightly understood, to bea far better explanation 
of such a phenomenon as Etna presents than can be found 
in all the pages of the geologists. For all our knowledge 
has not enabled us to write an idyll like that, nor, as a 
matter of fact, are we any nearer, if as near, a right explana- 
tion of Etna. | 


What does it profit me to know that Etna is the loftiest 
4 37 


38 CITIES OF SICILY 


mountain in Sicily, being 10,758 feet high and by far the 
greatest volcano in Europe; that it is 18 miles north 
by west of Catania, covers a territory of 460 square miles 
and is about 100 miles round the base; that it is older 
than Vesuvius and that its activity is older than the glacial 
period in Central Europe ; that it forms an isolated mass, 
bounded on the north by the Alcantara River, on the east 
by the sea, and on the west and south by the Giarretta, 
the ancient Symaethos? Such facts no doubt have their 
use, but when you have added to them all that modern 
science can tell you, you are not a hair’s breadth nearer 
explaining why at various and irregular intervals Etna 
pours forth destruction upon its territory, and many times 
has half destroyed the city of Catania. You do not know 
why it should do it, any more than youcan foretell when it 
is going to befall. 

All that is known of Etna to-day does not seem to me 
to amount to as much as what is implied in those idylls 
of Theocritus and the fables of the ancients. There we 
are told that Typhoeus, the son of Tartarus and Gaea, a 
fire-breathing giant with a hundred heads, desired to 
acquire the sovereignty of gods and men, but was subdued 
after a fearful struggle by Zeus with a thunderbolt, and 
“now the steep shores above Cumae, and Sicily too, lie 
heavy on his shaggy breast, and the column that soareth 
to heaven crusheth him, even snow-clad Etna, who nurseth 
her keen frost for the livelong year—Etna, from whose 
inmost caves burst forth the purest founts of unapproach- 
able fire, and, in the day time, her rivers roll a lurid stream 
of smoke, while amid the gloom of night, the ruddy flame, 
as it sweepeth along, with crashing din whirleth rocks 
to the deep sea far below. And that monster flingeth 
aloft the most fearful founts of fire, a monstrous marvel 
to behold, a wonder even to hear, when men are hard by ; 
such a being is he that lieth bound between those dark- 
leaved heights and the ground below, while all his out- 
stretched back is goaded by his craggy couch !”’ 

That seems to be all we know, and since Pindar wrote 
his first Pythian Ode,! what, even till to-day, has natural 

1 Pindar Pyth. i, 30 ef seq. Cf. Aischylus, Prometheus, 353 et seq. 


ETNA 39 


science told us else or more—though with how much less 
art of expression? And if you want something more 
philosophical, take down Lucretius and turn to the sixth 
book, and you will receive a more profound impression of 
the greatness and mystery of the Universe and the wonder 
of Etna than in all the geological text-books. 

The silence of Homer, if indeed he is silent and Poly- 
phemus himself is not Etna, might seem inexplicable ; 
for even though he were never in Sicily, the sailors’ gossip 
which informed him of such comparatively tame wonders 
as Scylla and Charybdis, could scarcely have been silent 
concerning Etna, had the volcano been as active then as 
it was later, or even as it is to-day. 

Hesiod, however, in the eighth century B.c. certainly 
knew the name of Etna,! and from the time of the Greek 
settlements in Sicily the mountain has been, of course, 
well known, and has been continually recorded. 

_ Pindar, as we have seen, gives us an account of the 
volcano, and probably describes therein the eruption of 
479 B.C. which took place on the same day as the Battle 
of Platza.2 This is generally said to have been the second 
eruption after the advent of the Greeks, the first is not 
recorded save by Thucydides who, speaking of the third, 
which took place in 425 B.c., says that it happened fifty 
years after the last preceding one, and that “‘ three eruptions 
all told are reported to have occurred since Sicily has been 
inhabited by the Hellenes.’’® The fourth eruption, that 
of 396 B.c., is recorded by Diodorus. After the destruction 
of the Athenian Expedition in 413 B.c. the Carthaginians 
fell upon Sicily and were met by Dionysius of Syracuse, 
who had built his fortress of Epipole to oppose them. The 
Carthaginian generals were Himilcar, in command of the 
Army, and Mago, in command of the Fleet. They fell 
upon Messina and destroyed it, and proceeded to advance 
by Taormina, then in the hands of the Sikelians, upon 
Catania. ‘“‘ Himilcar set out,’’ says Diodorus, “‘ and quickly 


1See Strabo, Lib. i, Cap. ii, par. 14. 

2 Pindar: Pyth. i, 4o-50. A#schylus: Pvometheus, 370, refers 
to the same eruption, it is thought. 

* Thucydides iii, 116. 


40 CITIES OF SICILY 


reached Naxos at the same time as Mago, who sailed 
along the coast; but a recent eruption of Etna, which 
reached as far as the sea, prevented the troops proceeding 
by land step by step with the fleet, for the coast was all 
ravaged by the lava of the volcano, so that the army was 
obliged to make the circuit of Etna.’’1 In other words, 
the army was obliged to pass up the valley of Alcantara 
and so to reach Catania by the way north and west round 
the mountain. 

Etna then seems to have been quiescent, as indeed 
Theocritus leads us to believe it was in his day, till 140 
B.c., when we hear of four very violent eruptions in about 
twenty years (140, 135, 126 and r2r B.c.). The last was 
the most terrible, especially for Catania, which it half 
destroyed. As bad or worse were to come in 49, 44, and 
38 B.c. These seven eruptions in about I00 years devas- 
tated the whole Etnean region of the eastern coast, which 
became uninhabitable and impassable for lack of water. 
Virgil 2 describes the eruption of 49 B.c., which he suggests 
presaged Czsar’s murder, both in the Georgics and the 
4ineid; and Livy asserts that the hot sand and ashes 
were carried as far as Reggio. While Pliny tells us that 
the noise of the eruption of 38 B.c. was heard in all parts 
of Sicily and that the ashes were carried to a distance of 
150 miles. 

These tremendous outbursts seem to have exhausted 
the activity of the volcano for many ages, and Orosius, 
writing in the fifth century of our era, speaks of Etna as 
having become quite harmless, 

It awoke again with a vengeance after a thousand years. 
In 1169, 1329 and 1381 appalling eruptions occurred, the 


lava reaching the sea; in 1669 part of Catania was — 


overwhelmed when the worst eruption of modern times 


occurred, Lesser disasters befell allthrough the nineteenth 
century, and the latest date from March, 1910 and May, 


IQII. 


1 Diodorus, xiv, 59. 

2 Virgil: Georg. i, 47; Enetd iil, 570 e¢ seq. 
3 Livy: ap. Serv. ad Georg. i, 47. 

‘Pliny: Nat, Hist. ii, 103-6; iil, 8-14. 





oe Gee ae es ae ae 


; 
: 





ETNA 41 


It is Strabo, who, among the ancients, gives us the 
best description of the mountain. 

“Near to Centoripa,’”’ he says, ‘‘is the town of A‘tna, 
which serves as a place for travellers, about to ascend 
Mount #Ztna, to halt and refresh themselves for the expedi- 
tion. For here begins the region in which is situated the 
summit of the mountain. The districts above are barren 
and covered with ashes, which are hidden by the snows 
in winter: all below, however, is filled with woods and 
plantations of all kinds. It seems that the summits of 
the mountain are often changed by the ravages of the fire, 
which sometimes is brought together into one crater and 
at another is divided; at one time again it heaves forth 
streams of lava, and at another flames and thick smoke: 
at other times again ejecting red-hot masses of fire-stone. 
In such violent commotions as these the subterraneous 
passages must necessarily undergo a corresponding change, 
and at times the orifices on the surface around are consider- 
ably increased. Some who have very recently ascended 
the mountain reported to us that they found at the top 
an even plain of about twenty stadia in circumference, 
enclosed by an overhanging ridge of ashes about the height 
of a wall, so that those who are desirous of proceeding 
further are obliged to leap down into the plain. They 
noticed in the midst of it a mound; it was ash-coloured, 
as was likewise the plain in appearance. Above the mound 
a column of cloud reared itself in a perpendicular line to 
the height of 200 stadia, and remained motionless, there 
being no air stirring at the time; it resembled smoke. 
Two of the party resolutely attempted to proceed further 
across this plain, but, finding the sand very hot, and sink- 
ing very deep in it, they turned back, without however 
being able to make any more particular observations, as 
to what we have described, than those who beheld from 
a greater distance. They were, however, of opinion from 
the observations they were able to make that much 
exaggeration pervades the accounts we have of the volcano 
and especially the tale about Empedocles, that he leaped 
into the crater, and left as a vestige of his folly one of 
the brazen sandals which he wore, it being found outside 


42 CITIES OF SICILY 


at a short distance from the lip of the crater, with the 
appearance of having been cast up by the violence of the 
flame; for neither is the place approachable nor even 
visible, nor yet was it likely that anything could be cast 
in thither, on account of the contrary current of the vapours 
and other matters cast up from the lower parts of the 
mountain, and also on account of the overpowering excess 
of heat, which would most likely melt anyone long before 
approaching the mouth of the crater; and if eventually 
anything should be cast down, it would be totally decom- 
posed before it was cast up again, what manner of form 
soever it might have had at first. And again, although it 
is not unreasonable to suppose that the force of the vapour 
and fire is occasionally slackened for want of a continual 
supply of fuel, still we are not to conclude that it is ever 
possible for a man to approach it in the presence of so 
great an opposing power. ... By night a glowing light 
appears on its summit, but in the daytime it is enveloped 
with smoke and thick darkness.”’ 4 

Such was Etna in the last years of the Republic. The 
whole country was then in a devastated and deserted 
condition, as another passage of Strabo’s tells us, and given 


over to horse-breeders, herdsmen and shepherds, who ~ 


preyed upon the decayed cities. And Strabo relates how 
one of these brigands, Selerus, called the son of A®tna, 
was captured and ‘“‘torn to pieces by wild beasts in the 
Forum after a contest of gladiators ; he had been set upon 
a platform fashioned to represent Mount A#tna, which being 
suddenly unfastened and falling, he was precipitated 
amongst certain cages of wild beasts which had also been 
slightly constructed under the platform for the occasion.’ # 
Strabo says he saw this. 

It is obvious, however, that in spite of the violent activity 
of the mountain at this time and the deserted condition 
of the country, Etna was ascended, and it seems from the 
town of Ztna which probably stood on the site of S. Maria 


di Licodia above Paternd. That Etna was frequently q 


ascended in Roman times is certain; for we not only 
have the tradition that the Emperor Hadrian climbed the 


1 Strabo, B. vi, Cap. ii, par. 8. 2 Ibid., par. 6. 


ea See ee ee eS, ees. ee 





ETNA 43 


volcano, but there remains in the so-called Torre del 
Filosofo a building dating from that time which may well 
have been set up for the expedition of Hadrian. 

Etna of course changes with each eruption, but the 
description of Strabo is accurate enough as far as it goes. 
The volcano is a truncated cone, interrupted on the east 
by the Valle del Bove, an appalling and sterile abyss, 
three miles wide and between 2,000 and 4,000 feet deep. 
Here was perhaps the original crater. The mountain is 
divided into three zones: the Regione Coltivata reaches 
to about 3,000 feet and extends beyond Nicolosi; the 
Regione Nemerosa, the region of forest which extends to 
about 6,800 feet, say to the Casa del Bosco ; and the Regione 
Deserta from about 6,800 feet to the summit. Each of 
these zones, however, may be sub-divided. The first, the 
cultivated region, divides itself into a lower part, where 
the olive will flourish, and the upper part, where the 
vine and the almond are at home. The forest region 
too divides itself into a lower region where the oak, the 
chestnut, the beech and the evergreen pine flourish, and 
an upper where little else but the birch is seen. In the 
highest zone, up to 8,000 feet, a very stunted vegetation 
still exists, but above that height there is nothing but 
black desert, and there the snow lies for the greater part 
of the year. But these limitations must not be taken too 
exactly. There is an enormous difference between the 
north and south sides of the mountain, for instance, and 
chestnuts will be found at all heights up to between 5,000 
and 6,000 feet, the vine will be found at over 3,500 feet, 
and the orange and lemon cease at about 1,000 feet only 
for lack of water. 

An expedition to the great crater of Etna can only 
properly be made in the full or late summer when the snow 
is gone from the mountain-side, and good and, above all, 
calm weather is assured. It is a very fatiguing business 
and, what is more, very monotonous, and though if you 
have the luck to get a clear sunrise from the summit, 
the reward is great, this has not been my good fortune, 
and altogether I rather doubt whether the ascent is worth 
the time and energy expended. 


44, CITIES OF SICILY 


It is some 30 miles from Catania to the summit and may 
be reckoned as follows: to Nicolosi 12, to S. Niccold 
d’Arena 2, to the Casa del Bosco 8, thence to the crater 8. 

Nicolosi, where you find your guides and mules, and 
where the ascent really begins, is a village of about 3,500 
inhabitants. It is well to sleep there and to visit the 
Monti Rossi, the twin peaks, an excursion of an hour and 
a half. From the left peak you get a great view and not 
least of the lava of 1886. 

The ascent of Mount Etna will not occupy less than seven 
hours on mule back. During the first four hours you 
pass through the forest region past the Casa del Bosco, 
a long, low building at the base of Monte Rinazzo, sur- 
rounded by many small craters, to the Casa Cantoniera 
under La Montagnola, about 6,150 feet above the sea, 
and an hour above the Casa del Bosco. It is possible to 
sleep at the Cantoniera, but not, I think, without permission 


from the Club Alpino Italiano ; at any rate one can always © f 


find water there. 

The dark and lofty peak to the right behind the Canton- 
iera is the Montagnola (8,700 feet), the head of the Serra 
del Solfizio, which closes with its tremendous cliffs the 
Valle del Bove in the south. You climb up and round 
the north end of this awful abyss by the Piano del Lago, 
under Monte Frumento, to the left, past the Rifugio 
Gemmellaro, a refuge built by the Observatory in case of 
the necessity of a swift retreat. You are now well into 
the desert zone, the landscape is quite lunar in its utter 
emptiness, and you are delighted to reach the Observatory 
at last, an hour after leaving the Rifugio Gemmellaro. 

Here you can sleep or at least lie down if you have come 
to see the sunrise, until the guide calls you. The Observa- 
tory is about 1,000 feet from the summit, which must now 
be reached on foot, in about an hour, climbing with ever- 
increasing difficulty, slipping in the dark volcanic dust 
and rocks, in which are many smoking rifts, on which one 
looks with increasing aversion and misgiving. One is 
conscious of the height, of the smoke above one, and in 
my own experience of ever-growing misery and fear of the 
wind, the wind, the wind! The crater itself J have never 





\ 


\ 
X 
\ 


ETNA 45 


been lucky enough to see with any real clearness, exactitude 
or composure. The wind and the cold numb the in- 
telligence. Oneis conscious of a vast cone rolling up 
and over into an unthinkable abyss which I was told was 
now divided into two parts, one of which I could see was 
streaming a vast cloud of smoke. I was not allowed, 
even had I had the wish, to approach its dreadful verge. 

It was not possible to remain in such a place for long, 
nor in fact was it worth the discomfort and the uneasiness 
it caused one after the weariness of the way. The view 
is often said to embrace the whole island and even to include 
Malta—I saw nothing of this. The wind stretched the 
vast cloud of smoke like a flag across the whole flank of 
the mountain and screened the shore. I saw the coasts 
of Sicily and Italy from beyond Messina to the Lipari 
Islands, and the shore southward to Catania, Augusta, 
Syracuse, and Capo Passaro. I sawthe winding Symaethos 
and the Lentinian fields and lake. Looking inland I 
descried Castrogiovanni, the Madonie and, perhaps, Mount 
Eryx. 

But not for a view of the Delectable Mountains or the 

Promised Land would I have remained in such a place, 
crouched as I was on the hot grit to avoid being blown 
off the mountain or into the dreadful abyss, and now in 
real fear of the height, of the cold, of the wind—above all 
of that accursed wind. No, for me Etna, the beast Etna, 
has little to offer but immense fatigue, discomfort, continual 
uneasiness, and now and then an overwhelming fear, which 
- engenders an active dislike. 
There remains that vision, the exquisite ghost I have 
- seen from Taormina, from Lentini, from Syracuse, a moun- 
tain in a dream, perfect, immaculate, in unearthly beauty, 
and, as that journey taught me, for ever out of reach. 
Have I lost that vision for ever by my rash and barbarous 
attempt ? Who knows? There is nothing to be gained 
by climbing Etna: there is much to lose. 


CHAPTER V 
ON THE WAY TO SYRACUSE 


Ses journey from Catania southward to Syracuse 
is surely one of the most interesting in Sicily, 
and, for me, certainly one of the most beautiful. 
The vast plain upon which one enters immediately after 
leaving the city, which indeed seems to beat against its 
walls, is the greatest and the richest in the island, the very 
home of Demeter, a wide sea of living green in spring, 
of golden wheat and stubble in summer. To-day those 
infinite cornfields are scattered with the wild flowers of 
Persephone. For Spring is come between sunrise and 
sunset. Yesterday in Catania it was still winter—for 
winter comes even to Sicily—while to-day Spring is 
suddenly here, not timidly as in the North, her tremulous 
footsteps brushing the last snow from the yellow crocus, 
but amid an infinite riot of wild flowers that the south 
wind has strewn before her feet. A light of a divine trans- 
parence, subtilely and puissantly warming, caresses the 
laughing shore and envelopes/and bathes the plain with 
its radiance. The vast green plain seems to stretch away 
for ever between the far hills and the purple sea into the 
slowly closing arms of the mountains. There is no building 
in sight, nor even a human being ; only the white approach 
of the wind over the tender green of the cornfields, and 
everywhere before it have run the flowers, campions, speed- 
wells, valerians, poppies, marguerite daisies, yellow or 
white, anemones purple and white and rose, and that 
Adonis flower of which Bion sings. The only, trees seem 
to be that line of Eucalyptus along the railway, a sinister 
hint that explains perhaps the total absence of all habita- 
tion. But who on such a day would spoil his pleasure 
46 





ON THE WAY TO SYRACUSE AZ 


by a thought of malaria, at least till nightfall, and when 
twilight comes I shall be safe in Siracusa. 

It is easy to-day and in this place—joyful with wild 
flowers now, to be golden with harvest later—it is easy to 
believe the ancient tradition that Sicily was the original 
home of Demeter and Persephone; that it was here the 
Goddesses first revealed themselves and were first wor- 
shipped, ages before Eleusis was founded, and gave the 
gift of corn to mankind. Here indeed it was that Demeter 
first produced that wheat which, according to Diodorus, 
such was the fertility of this soil, in Sicily alone grew wild, 
as the olive grew, without tillage. 

But it is not only or even chiefly with the flowers and 
the sea, even on such a morning as this, that one’s eyes 
are full. Ever more lovely, ever more lofty, as you make 
your way across the great plain, Etna rises behind you, 
rises quite out of the sea in one perfect and unbroken 
line from base to summit, from the incredible blue of 
the Ionian to the pure snow upon the crater, from which 
the great white plume of smoke lies across the infinite sky. 

This view of Etna, which first on one side and then on 
the other, fills half a morning or afternoon, is one of the 
noblest and most beautiful anywhere to be had. One can 
scarcely lift one’s eyes from it to look again on that radiant 
plain or for a moment to watch that herd of goats wander- 
ing along the sunlit shore while the little goatherd plays 
with the waves that lace all that silver beach. Indeed 
so much does Etna fill your eyes that you scarce notice 
as you pass a considerable stream, the Symaethos of the 
poets, that of old marked the frontier between the terri- 
tories of those two Chalcidic cities Catana and Leontinoi, 
nor, a little later, that sheet of shallow water abounding 
in fish, which now lies beneath the broken hill of two 
summits with a hollow between, upon which Leontinoi 
stood. A little stream, the Lissus, now called the Lentini, 
flows about the hill to the north and loses itself in the 
malarious marsh by the sea. 

Leontinoi is no more. Not a stone of the Greeks seems 
to remain. It stood on these hills of which the two 
summits formed natural citadels and made an important 


48 CITIES OF SICILY 


fortress. It was founded from Naxos, the first of her 
colonies, in 730 B.c. We know little of its early history, 
but the strength of its position and the fertility of the great 
plain at its feet, renowned in all ages, gave it prosperity, 
and these excited continually the cupidity of Dorian 
Syracuse. Against the envy of that great metropolis, 
the greatest city perhaps in the Mediterranean, how could 
Leontinoi stand? Her history indeed resolves itself into 
the story of her repeated fall and repeated rescue. And 


as in other similar cases the things which are not brought 
to naught the things which are. For it was the appeal ca 


of Leontinoi by the rhetoric of her citizen Gorgias which 
first brought the Athenians into Sicily against Syracuse 
to such fatal purpose, to such tragic and irremediable 
disaster at last. And when this was accomplished Leon- 
tinoi became just a fortress such as Acre was, in the hands 
of Syracuse upon her northern border: a citadel and a 
look-out over the wealth of the great plain and the highway 
of the sea. 

It is of these things that I thought as I wandered about 
the old ruined medieval castle, 4/ Castellaccio, which stands 
it is said upon the chief acropolis of Greek Leontinoi : 


how the novel rhetoric of Gorgias persuaded the Athenians — F. 
to interfere in Sicilian affairs to such utter disaster for us _ 


all. For if the Athenian Expedition had never set out; 
or, setting out, had succeeded, it may be Rome might ~ 
never have conquered the world and our civilization would 
be Greek instead of Latin. 

But even before arriving at Leontinoi, indeed upon ~ 
crossing the Symaethos, one has reached the hills, the Syra- 
cusan limestone, the foothills of the Hyblean Mountains, 
One is here really within the natural territory of Syracuse, _ 
a country stony enough to give it a definite Greek character, 
and with surprises beyond counting of beauty and riches 
and joy. a 

Once round the Xiphonian Promontory, that to-daythey 
call Capo S. Croce, the whole famous Gulf of Megara lies _ 
before you, with Thapsus i in its arms, closed on the south ~ 
by the Promontory of Trogilus, Capo di S. Paling and. 
though hidden, Syracuse itself. =a 





ON THE WAY TO SYRACUSE 49 


There is nothing certainly in Sicily, and perhaps in the 
world, more moving than the first sight of this great gulf 
with its storied promontories and peninsulas, its stoniness, 
the amazing and arid strength of its landscape, where once, 
and perhaps twice, was decided the destiny of the world. 
The first sight of this shore, where every feature bears a 
household name, dearer far and lovelier than anything 
Roman can ever be, catches the breath and fills the eyes 
more surely than even its own loveliness and strength 
could do. And for those for whom this is the first Greek 
landscape they have seen with their mortal eyes the effect 
isoverwhelming. For Sicilian though it be, the landscape 
is Greek; it has the Greek stoniness, the Greek leanness 
of form and nobility of outline, the grey of the Greek 
olives, the asphodel, the anemone and the sea. Beyond 
the bare cliffs of that far tableland the Hyblean Mountains 
shine. 

As you come into this wide bay, you are struck at once, 
as though some great epic story known from boyhood had 
come true for you at last, with its almost remembered and 
strangely characteristic features—the great harbour of 
Megara there under the northern promontory, the site of 
Megara beyond it, whose walls you may still trace and 
whose spoil you may find in the Museum of Syracuse ; 
the white town of Augusta, a foundation of Frederick II 
in 1232 that has replaced the Megara of the hills; the 
strange low peninsula ending in the Promontory of Thapsus 
behind which lay the Athenian fleet when Nikias stormed 
Epipole; the little bay of Trogilus where the Roman 
ships lay at anchor when Marcellus conquered Syracuse 
for Rome; and then the now desolate heights of the great 
city itself, Epipole, Tyche, Achradina; and at last the 
Island of Ortygia, Syracuse itself, with the Little Harbour 
to the north and beyond the Great Harbour within Plem- 
myrion, 

That bare and stony landscape with its ancient olives, 
those heights and promontories, that desolate upland, that 
island which still bears the city—I say they are sacred, 
and to see them with these mortal eyes, having seen them 
since boyhood with the eyes of the mind, is overwhelming ; 


50 CITIES OF SICILY 


and for this too, because they are a part of the soul. In) 
some way not easy to explain they are more than the well ~ 
known and beloved places of home, because in them the — 
imagination has most been used to dwell, and all our ideas ~ 
of honour, of courage, of nobility and sacrifice, our sense — 
of what is tragic in human life and in history, i in inte oe 
part there abide. i 
\And as our fathers marching with the great armies — 
when they first saw Jerusalem were wont to kneel down — 
and hold out their arms in longing, satisfied at last,sowe, 
beholding for the first time these hills, this shore, this city, E 
sacred too, may bow the head lest men see the tears in _ 
our eyes. a 













CHAPTER VI 
SYRACUSE 


I 
SYRACUSE 


S you come to Syracuse to-day, in the midst of a 
van stony desolation only half hidden by the fragile 

beauty of the passing blossom, the loveliness of 
innumerable wild flowers, you find that great city which 
men called Pentapolis shrunk to scarcely more than a 
confused huddle of houses upon the little island that was 
her first foundation. 

That great Dorian city, the scene of the most successful 
and the most disastrous defence in history, hallowed by the 
footsteps of AEschylus, the beauty of Philistis, the voice of 
Plato, the verse of Pindar, of Simonides, of Theocritus— 
what has become of it ? It might seem incredible that a 
city of 500,000 inhabitants, whose walls measured some 
twenty miles round about, can have been utterly swept 
away. Whither is it gone ? 

There remains upon the island of Ortygia the greater part 
of one Temple and the foundations of another : in Neapolis 
in the plain upon the mainland, the ruin of the Theatre, 
a vast Ara, an Amphitheatre of the Roman time and the 
so-called Palestra, together with a street—the Street of 
Tombs. But upon the plateau—on Achradina nothing, on 
Tyche nothing, a road, the foundation of a building, on 
Epipole the ruined walls of Dionysius and the enormous 
foundations, galleries and broken towers of his fortress of 
Euryalus. 

It is there I think upon that stony plateau that once was 
Syracuse, where all that is left is a meagre pasture for goats 

5i 


a 


52 CITIES OF SICILY 


and sheep, where the asphodel and the olive alone are at 
home, that one wonders most. What has become of it all ? 
Where is it gone? They cannot have carted away the 
very stones of the streets, the very foundations of the walls 
and the houses. Has the sun broken even these into dust ? 
Has the wind blown the dust into the sea? 

No ; the greatest of Greek cities, the most beautiful of all 
cities, is not even a ruin: it has utterly passed away under 
the energy and the neglect of man, the endless days of 
scirocco, the centuries of summers, the countless winters’ 
rains. And Time, eater of all things, has consumed even 
the dust of what was once so great. 

Ah, but it remains . . . it remains in the mind, in the 
beloved pages of Herodotus, the truthful pages of Thucy- 
dides ; and, yes, in the heart . . . for ever in the heart, 
in the idylls of Theocritus. 

And so lying there on Epipole many an afternoon, 
lazily turning over their pages, while the shepherd passes 
below me with his sheep or the goatherd wanders with his 
goats under the olives, and I have only to lift my eyes to 
see Ortygia and the Great Harbour or Thapsus, standing 
up out of the sea, little by little it rises before me the 
Syracuse of old. 

For in such a place, the whole site of the great city be- 
neath me, it is easy to understand how strange and beautiful 
was its situation and, as I am come to discern, of a unique 
advantage. 

There, some three miles away, like a boat at the launch, 
lies the island, Ortygia, where Syracuse was founded, 
between the Great Harbour to the south and the Lesser 
Harbour to the north. Behind me again some three miles 
away towers up the high and precipitous tableland of 


the Hyblzan Mountains—Monti Climiti. Between those j 


mountains and the island lies this lofty triangular plateau 


surrounded on two sides by the sea, and on the south © 
falling away more gently to the wide valley and meander- 
ing course of the Anapus amid meadows and groves famous ~ 


for their beauty. 


’ 


Standing thus as she did upon this lofty and often — 
precipitous plateau, defended by the sea and the marshes ~ 





a 
ss 


SYRACUSE 58 


of Anapus, and easily protected towards the mountains 
where the plateau narrows like the prow of a ship and the 
Fort of Euryalus stands up before the loftier Belvedere, 
Syracuse must always have been impregnable, and was 
in fact never taken save by treachery. 

She possessed two harbours: the Lesser Harbour which 
lies to the north of the Island, small and shallow, but con- 
venient for all the shipping of her time, and the Great 
Harbour to the south, a vast sheet of water nearly six 
miles in circumference and almost, but not quite, enclosed 
by Ortygia and the peninsula of Plemmyrion ; the entrance 
indeed is but 1,200 yards across, and everywhere within 
the water is at all times deep enough to admit the 
largest modern vessels. It is perhaps the finest harbour 
in Sicily. 

But there is much more than this. 

Lying as she did so far southward upon the eastern 
coast of Sicily, Syracuse commanded two seas, the Ionian 
and the African, and that not at one, but at two, crucial 
points : the entry into the Strait of Messina, and the Malta 
Channel, the narrows of the Mediterranean itself, between 
Sicily and Africa. Thus the strategic advantage of her 
position was pre-eminent and it remains such that it might 
seem certain Syracuse will re-arise, and we may perhaps 
expect to see the whole territory between the peninsula 
of Plemmyrion and the Xiphonian Chersonese turned into 
a great naval and aerial fortress commanding not only the 
Strait of Messina but the Mediterranean at its narrowest 
passage. 

Far be that day! For who then could dream of Greece 
amid the ruins of Epipolz, while the bees flitted through the 
ivy? Or who then in the orchards of Anapus would watch 
the almond blossom give place to the tender green of the 
leaf, as lovely if not lovelier ? Or who, if such befell, 
under the stars on the stony slopes by the sea, while the 
goats stray among the ruins of Dionysius, would listen to 
the goatherd piping his ditty of low tone ? 


54 CITIES OF SICILY 


II 
THE STORY OF SYRACUSE 


Syracuse was a Corinthian colony established from the 
city of Corinth by Archias, son of Euagetes, of the great 
family of Bacchiade. As Praxinoa says, in the fifteenth 
idyll of Theocritus, ‘‘ If you must know we’re Corinthians 
by extraction—we Syracusans—like Bellerophon himself. 
What we talk is Peloponnesian. I suppose Dorians may 
speak Doric, mayn’t they ?’’ Certainly the Syracusans of 
all ages always regarded themselves as of pure Corinthian 
origin, and what is more, they maintained the closest 
relations with the mother city. 





, ap 
oe 
Vs : eo Se at Ce 
ee eee Ye ee ae ee 


The colony was founded in 734 B.c., the year after the — 


establishment of Naxos, and upon the Island of Ortygia. 
And just as Naxos was dedicated to Apollo, so Syracuse 
was dedicated to Artemis, the name of the island being 
hers ; but the city seems almost at once to have taken the 
name it was ever afterwards to bear, as it would seem from 
the adjoining marsh, Syraco. 


Of the early history of the city we know nothing; but 


it certainly flourished, for we find it establishing forts and 
colonies within a hundred years of its foundation: Acre 
(Palazzolo) in 664 B.c., Casmene in 644 B.c.,and Camarina 
on the south coast in 599 B.C. 


The government of Syracuse at this time was in the © 
hands of an unstable oligarchy called the Geomori, the — 
descendants of the original colonists. About 486 B.c., — 
however, the democracy.succeeded in expelling it, but the © 
despot of Gela (Terranova), Gelon by name, espoused the ~ 
cause of the exiles and in the following year, 485 B.c.,made — 


himself master of Syracuse. 


Gela at this time was certainly a more powerful state © 
than Syracuse. Hippocrates, its late despot, had made ~ 


himself master of many of the cities of eastern Sicily, 


among them of Camarina, which he had repeopled from — 
Gela. Gelon however seems at once to have understood ~ 
the superior geographical advantages of Syracuse, for no — 
sooner was he master than he removed the new citizens — 





SYRACUSE 55 


of Camarina in a body there and a little later more than 
half those of Gela itself; and seizing also Sicilian Megara 
and Euboea he brought all their more wealthy citizens into 
his new capital. In every way he strengthened and 
adorned Syracuse so that in his hands it became with- 
out question the first of the Greek cities of Sicily. 

He was only just in time. The conspiracy of Xerxes 
with the Carthaginians for an attack upon Europe was com- 
pleted. Herodotus tells us how the Athenians and Spar- 
tans in fear for Greece sent an embassy to Gelon to ask 
for his assistance—a sufficient compliment to his power. 
He refused, for he seems to have been aware, though they 
apparently were not, that the Carthaginians had under- 
taken to attack the Greeks in Sicily at the same time as 
Xerxes attacked Greece proper. So it befell: and we may 
hope that the tradition is true which records that the 
victory of Salamis and the victory of Himera were won 
on the same day in the autumn of 480 B.c. 

The attack of the Carthaginians upon Sicily was made 
in this wise. In 481 B.c., Terillus of Himera,in the north 
of Sicily, had been expelled by Theron, who had lately 
established himself as despot of Acragas (Girgenti). Teril- . 
lus thereupon conspired with the Carthaginians who sent a 
vast fleet and army under Hamilcar, and sailing to Panor- 
mos (Palermo), laid siege to Himera, then in the hands of 
Theron, who was able to defend it until Gelon arrived with 
an army of 50,000 foot and 5,000 horse. This force, 
though far less than the Carthaginian, was enough. All 
day as the battle raged Hamilcar threw burnt offerings 
upon the fire, till at evening news reached him that his 
army was defeated, whereupon he threw himself on to 
the fire—whether as the most costly gift of allor in despair 
history does not record. 

This great victory of Gelon’s was not less famous among 
the Sicilian Greeks than those of Salamis and Platea 
among the Athenians and Spartans. The vast number 
of prisoners taken at Himera and distributed among 
the cities of Sicily added to their wealth and resources, and 
their labour no doubt explains the great works presently 
undertaken in Syracuse, in Gela and in Acragas. 


56 ‘CITIES OF SICILY 


Nor was Gelon merely a great soldier and administrator, — 
By his patronage of Letters and the Arts he rendered — 
Syracuse famous and the resort of poets and artists. 
Among the guests of his court and that of his successor were 
Eschylus, Pindar and Bacchylides ; while Syracuse itself 
gave birth to Sophron, whose Mimes—and he was the 
inventor of Mimes—were the glory of Dorian Comedy, and 
to Epicharmus, the chief comic poet among the Dorians, 
who first gave to comedy a regular plot. Though his 
childhood was spent in Megara he passed his best years 
at the courts of Gelon and Hieron. It is mainly to that 
successor Hieron that we owe the marvellous medallions 
and coins, never equalled for beauty, which distinguish 


Syracuse above every other city even of Greek Sicily. The — 
silver Demareteion, struck in commemoration of the ~ 


Carthaginian defeat by Gelon and coined out of the treasure 
given to Gelon’s wife Demarete by the Carthaginians, is 
perhaps the most beautiful medallion in existence.1 It — 
was the first of a whole series scarcely less lovely of which 


those by Kimon and Evaenetus struck in commemoration _ 


of the Athenian defeat sixty-seven years later are especially 
beautiful. It was too no doubt at this period that the 
famous Temples and Theatre of the city were built, and _ 
the city itself established upon the mainland, not only in 
Achradina and Tyche but in Neapolis. 

But fragile are the thrones of princes, especially, one 
may think, Greek princes. Hieron was succeeded by his 
brother Thrasybulus, who proved himself a tyrant,and the _ 
Syracusans expelled him in 466 B.c. After many dissen- — 


sions a democracy was established and there followed about _ 


sixty years of free government during which Syracuse — 
developed with great rapidity both in wealth and power. 
“‘ All Sicily,’’ says Diodorus, “‘ grew in prosperity, and, — 
enjoying profound peace, cultivated its fertile soil, saw its — 
wealth increase, filled itself with slaves, with flocks and ~ 


1 Obverse : Victory crowning the horses of a chariot; below the a 
lion of Carthage in flight. Reverse: Head of Victory surrounded 
by dolphins and within the word ZYPAXOZSION. There is no 


example in the Museum at Syracuse, It may be seen at the British — 
Museum, 





SYRACUSE 57 


herds and every kind of well-being; the revenues grew 
because they had no war to sustain.’”’ } 

There followed the most miserable, the most unfortunate 
and the most tragic event in the history of Syracuse, even 
in the history of the Greeks, and perhaps in the history of 
Europe: the Athenian Expedition. 

Thucydides relates that adventure precisely like a Greek 
tragedy. It has its cause and its effect : things done have 
an end; for the crime committed upon the Melians, an 
act of insensate and evil folly worthy he seems to suggest 
of those who conceived the attack upon Sicily, there is the 
Nemesis of Syracuse. To read those calm and truthful 
pages is to be present at a great ceremony, to be a spec- 
tator, as in the theatre, of a greater tragedy than any 
imagined by Aéschylus, by Sophocles, by Euripides; to 
share a vision of something which seems to be fatal in the 
world, in the acts of men, in the very nature of things; 
and to witness the mind of the gods in action and the justice 
that is theirs. 

But that is not the only way of looking at this most 
wonderful event. If we regard the expedition from a 
political point of view we shall not be so hard upon Athens. 

In the first place it was a definite action in the Pelo- 
ponnesian War: it was quite natural and right that Athens 
should wish to make her sea power predominant in the 
west : the whole political situation demanded it. 

And then the most serious and dangerous hostility which 
Athens had to face was the commercial rivalry of Corinth, 
the mother of Syracuse, the head of the Dorian cities of 
Sicily. A counter to Corinthian influence in Sicily and 
Italy was a necessity. Politically the Athenian Expedition 
was justified. 

Nor was it rash from the military point of view. All the 
chances were in its favour. The failure and the fault lay 
not in the conception of the expedition but in its execution. 
Nikias was the ruin of the Athenian Expedition. Had the 
advice of Lamachus been taken and Syracuse attacked at 
once Syracuse would have fallen. Had Alcibiades not been 
recalled the attack would have been pushed on and Gylippus 


1 Diodorus xi, 72. 


58 CITIES OF SICILY 


would never have been dispatched from Sparta. Had 
Nikias, even when Lamachus was dead and Alcibiades in 
Sparta, completed the north wall upon Epipole, Gylippus 
would never have reached the besieged and Syracuse would 
have fallen at last. The fault was Nikias’, who was supine 
and irresolute when he should have been active and bold, 
who shirked responsibility when he should have staked 
his life: the failure was due to nothing in the character 
of the expedition but to everything in the character of the 
leader. And since he was the choice, confirmed again and 
again by the Athenian democracy, theirs was the fault 
and the folly in which their whole polity was, alas, to 
perish. 

I must not here relate the famous story over again. Every 
schoolboy has been present upon the heights of Epipole, 
watched the great naval fight from the Theatre of Syracuse, 
and wept with the captive Athenian youths in the depths 
of the Latomiz. 

It must be enough tosay here that the Athenians, urged 
to it by the unstable genius of Alcibiades, in the middle 
of the Peloponnesian War,in a moment of truce, grasped 
at the domination of their world and determined to fit 
out a vast expedition, both naval and military, to besiege 
and take Syracuse, the greatest city in the Mediterranean, 
in the hope of thus seizing all Sicily, then Carthage, and 
finally the Peloponnesus—in fact the Mediterranean. 

The immediate pretexts for the expedition were a quarrel 
between Selinus and Segesta, in which the Athenians. es- 
poused the cause of Segesta against Syracuse, which sup- 
ported Selinus ; and an appeal from Leontinoi for justice 
against Syracuse. 

The first armament that Athens launched in this affair 
—it was doubled later—was the costliest and most splendid 
that any city up to that time had ever sent forth. It 
sailed at midsummer in 413 B.c., and the whole of Athens 
went down to the Peirzus at dawn to see the spectacle. 
There were 134 triremes and an immense number of smaller 
vessels ; there were 5,100 hoplites, and a total number 
of more than 30,000 combatants, but no cavalry. 

One can see with the mind’s eye that great and beautiful 








SYRACUSE 59 


armament racing to A’gina, sailing round the dreaming head- 
lands of Greece, crossing the Ionian sea from Corcyra and 
coasting along the far stretched gulf of Magna Grecia. 
But from the very beginning misfortune dogged the 
Athenians. 

Even before they sailed they had been delayed by that 
sacrilegious outrage upon the Herme, of which Alcibiades 
had been accused, which alarmed the superstition and per- 
haps the piety of Athens. And now they could find no 
city in all Magna Grecia to receive them and give them a 
market till they came to Rhegium, and even there they 
were not admitted within the walls. And here it was they 
discovered that the wealth of Segesta, which was to finance 
their enterprise, did not exist. 

So there at Rhegium the three commanders, Alcibiades 
the soul of the expedition, Nikias its weakness, who had 
advised against it, and Lamachus, the least of the three 
but a soldier, took counsel. 

In that counsel Nikias proposed to shew the armament 
of Athens to the Syracusans and by its mere prestige to get 
justice if possible both for Segesta and for Leontinoi, and 
then toreturn to Athens. Alcibiades proposed to negotiate 
an alliance with the Sikelian natives and to persuade the 
Greek cities in Sicily to come to their side and then to 
attack Syracuse. Lamachus was a soldier. He proposed 
to seize Megara as a base and to attack the Syracusans 
forthwith. There can be no doubt that he was right, and 
had his plan been adopted it would have been successful, 
Syracuse would have fallen, and the whole history of 
Europe might have been different. But he was the least 
of the three, and when he saw that his colleagues would 
not adopt his advice he gave his vote for the plan of 
Alcibiades. 

So Alcibiades had his way. Naxos and Catana were 
persuaded to their ruin, and a demonstration was made in 
the Great Harbour of Syracuse. 

Then befell the third misfortune. Alcibiades was re- 
called to Athens to answer the charges of mutilating the 
Herme and profaning the Eleusinian mysteries. Instead 
of returning, he escaped his escort at Thurii, made his way 


60 CITIES OF SICILY 


to Sparta, where he appeared as the avowed enemy of — 
his country, and began his terrible revenge. ie 

Nikias, now the unquestioned leader of the expedition, — 
wasted the rest of the year in futile enterprises. When 
winter came he roused himself for a moment and by some 
stratagem lured the Syracusan army to attack hiscampat 
Cat ana while in the meantime he had embarked his host 
and sailed for the Great Harbour. There he landed and 
won a victory over the Syracusans who had hastilyreturned, 
but this done he re-embarked and returned to his base at 
Catana. 





Meantime in Sparta Alcibiades had revealed the plans 
of the Athenians and urged the dispatch of that most — 
energetic and most fortunate soldier Gylippus to the assis- _ 
tance of Syracuse. 

At last with the Spring Nikias made a move. The 
fleet left Catana, entered the bay of Thapsus and landed ~ 
the army at the foot of Epipole onthe north. Thesoldiers 
rushed up the steep slope, none opposing, and were masters 
of the open plateau. There, where upon that north slope 
the escarpment first turns due east, they built their fort 
Labdalon; but Alcibiades would have fortified Euryalus, 
The siege of Syracuse had begun. “4 

The Athenians’ plan was to shut the city off from all 
assistance by land, as their fleet was doing by sea. Tothis — 
end they began to build a wall from the northern escarp- 
ment of Epipolz to the Great Harbour. They began by ~ 
erecting a circular fort in the middle of the plateau, and 
from this they purposed to build a wall north and a wall 
south. ‘ 

The Syracusans, untrained and undisciplined, attempted 
to stop thém, but failing in this they in their turn began 
to build a counter wall to intercept the southern wall ofthe 
Athenians: but this the Athenians soon swept away. It — 
was successful in this however that it drew the attention — 
of the Athenians off their north wall, and, as we shall see, 
it was the north wall that was crucial. Through that gap 
Gylippus was to enter. e 

The Athenians now began to fortify the southern escarp- 
ment of Epipole near the Temple of Herakles, as part of — 


SYRACUSE 61 


the work on their south wall. The Syracusans then began 
a fortification much further down ; they dug a huge trench 
defended by a palisade right across the marsh of Lysimeleia 
behind the Great Harbour, from the gate by the Agora to 
the Anapus. The Athenians attacked and destroyed it, 
but in that encounter Lamachus was slain—Lamachus 
who was a soldier ; and Nikias, already ill, was left in sole 
command. Yet hewas happy, for he thought the city won. 
The southern wall was advanced in a double line and 
the fleet left Thapsus and entered the Great Harbour. 

In that hour news came to despairing Syracuse, by the 
mouth of a Corinthian captain: Corinthian ships were 
on the sea and a Spartan General even then at hand. 

It was at Locri that Gylippus learned that Syracuse might 
yet be saved, that the north wall of the Athenians was 
not completed, and he and his force, supplied by half the 
Greek cities of Sicily, might enter. By the very path of 


‘the Athenians he scaled Epipole by night, and without 


opposition, by way of Tyche, entered the city. 

Immediately he took command. His first act was to 
seize the fort Labdalon, his next to begin a new counter wall 
extending from the walls of the city at Tyche along the 
whole length of the plateau to Euryalus which he fortified. 
The new wall met the Athenian north wall at right angles, 
and there was a race in wall-building in which the Syracusans 
were the winners. This was really the decisive act in the ~ 
siege. Nikias certainly thought so and wrote to Athens 
for large reinforcements. They were prepared and sent. 
Meantime Nikias occupied and fortified the headland of 
Plemmyrion, but the Syracusans, who still held the Olym- 
pieum, attacked his fort and took the position. This was 
decisive in another way, for it meant that Syracuse now 
held both the headlands that enclosed the Great Harbour 
in which lay the Athenian fleet. In fact ina naval encounter 
there the Syracusans were completely victorious, and were 
about to push their advantage when the Athenian re- 
inforcement arrived under Demosthenes. 

Demosthenes turned his attention to Epipole, but Gylip- 
pus had there strengthened his wall with forts and Demos- 
thenes’ attempt failed. This, Demosthenes considered as 


62. CITIES OF SICILY 


decisive and he advised the abandonment of the whole 
enterprise. Nikias however even now could not bring 
himself to make a decision. 

The Syracusans had now become the aggressors. They 
attacked the Athenian fleet in the Great Harbour and cut 
off and destroyed the right wing. Then it was they 
conceived the idea of the annihilation of the whole. They 
began to block up the mouth of the Great Harbour by 
mooring ships across it from Ortygia to Plemmyrion. 

The Athenians saw their doom. They abandoned 
everything on the heights and assembled in the naval camp 
near the Olympieum. There it was that they watched 
the fleet make the final effort to break through the barrier 
of the Syracusan ships and reach the open sea. 

Thucydides describes that tragic scene: ‘‘ While the 
naval engagement hung in the balance the two armies on — 
shore underwent a mighty conflict and tension of mind. 
The fortune of the battle varied and it was not possible 
that the spectators on shore should all receive the same 
impression of it. For since the spectacle they were wit- 
nessing was close at hand, and having different points of 
view, while some would see their own ships victorious and 
their courage would revive and they would call on the 
gods not to take from them their hopes of deliverance, 
others would see their ships worsted and would cry and 
shriek aloud more utterly unnerved than the men who 
were actually fighting. Others again whose gaze was 
fixed on some part where the battle was even, moved 
by the long-drawn uncertainty and the awful suspense, 
would move their bodies in their excitement and fear in 
accord with their opinion, for they were always within a 
hair’s breadth of escaping or perishing. And so you 
might hear in the Athenian army at once lamentation, 
shouting, cries of victory or defeat, and all the various 
sounds which are wrung from a great host in the extremity 
of danger. Not less agonizing were the feelings of those on 
board, till at length the Syracusans and their allies, after 
a protracted struggle, put the Athenians to flight .. .” 

The Athenian fleet was utterly annihilated. Nothing 
now remained to Nikias but retreat by land to neutral 





> 
SYRACUSE 63 


territory. Even this was delayed, so that when he set 
out by the pass beyond Floridia he found it blocked at the 
Acrean Rock and had to return and take the Helorine 
Road. Upon that road he and Demosthenes were over- 
taken upon the banks of the Asinarus near Noto and were 
compelled to lay down their arms. The whole army was 
then destroyed and seven thousand state prisoners were 
brought back to Syracuse and imprisoned in the Latomie, 
where most of them perished of want, pestilence and 
exposure. Nikias and Demosthenes the Syracusans put to 
death. 

“Thus ended the greatest of all Hellenic actions—the 
most glorious to the victors, the most ruinous to the van- 
quished ; for they were utterly and at all points defeated 
and their sufferings were prodigious. Fleet and army 
perished from the face of the earth ; nothing was saved, and 
of the many who went forth few returned home.”’ 

Thus ended the Athenian Expedition. 

That amazing victory placed Syracuse at the head of all 
the Greek cities in Sicily. She took her vengeance upon 
Leontinoi, Catana and Naxos, which had admitted the 
Athenians, and then turned to meet a new foe—the Car- 
thaginians—whom the Segestans had now invited to sup- 
port them against Selinus. 

In 4ro B.c. the Carthaginians began their new attempt to 
destroy the Greek cities of Sicily. They overthrew both 
Himera and Selinus and in 406 B.c. fell upon Acragas and 
destroyedit. It wasnowthat Dionysius, still a young man, 
made himself tyrant of Syracuse, turned Ortygia into a 
fortress for himself, constructed docks in the Lesser Har- 
bour, built the great fort of Euryalus and walled Epipole. 
This was achieved in time. In 397 B.c. he declared war on 
Carthage, marched from one end of Sicily to the other, laid 
siege to their great stronghold Motya and took it, and 
though he lost it in the following year and was forced 
_ by Himilco to retreat upon Syracuse, he shut himself up 
in that fortress and held out till by a lucky stroke he was 
able to defeat the Carthaginians by sea and land and 
consented to their departure from Sicily. And though 
Mago in 393 B.c. renewed the attack it was with no better 


64 CITIES OF SICILY 


success, Dionysius remained master of the city, and © 
with leisure to make himself master of Greek Sicily. 

It was now Syracuse reached the zenith of her power and — 
prosperity. Though his government was oppressive and — 
especially in his latter years, when he became extremely 
suspicious, Dionysius contributed much to the greatness — 
of the city and displayed his magnificence at the Olympic 
games and sent rich presents to Olympia and to Delphi. 
He was not only the patron of artists and men of letters 
but himself repeatedly contended for the prize of tragedy 
at Athens, where he several times obtained the second and 
third prizes and finally bore away the first prize with a play 
called The Ransom of Hector at the Lenaea. 

As a patron he is famous for having entertained Plato, 
at Syracuse, as his son did after him, and though the 
story of his having sold him as a slave is probably untrue, 
he presently sent him home in disgrace, while he confined 
Philoxenus the poet in the Latomiz for having criticized 
his bad verses. None of these remain to us, but his walls and 
fortress upon Epipole are his enduring monument, 


He was succeeded by his son Dionysius the Younger in — E, 


367 B.c. This man had neither the energy nor the ability 
of his father, and the government of Syracuse soon fell 
into chaos. In 356 B.c. Dionysius being in Italy, his son 
Apollocrates was compelled to surrender the fortress of 
Ortygia to Dion, the friend of Plato, the representative of 
the people of Syracuse. But when it was seen that he did 
not restore the liberties of the people he was presently 
assassinated, and we find Dionysius still in possession of 
the fortress of Ortygia when in 344 B.c. Timoleon landed in 
Sicily. 3 
Aer the death of Dion the most terrible disorders pre- ig 
vailed, not only in Syracuse but throughout Sicily. Car- 
thage was preparing to take advantage of this state of 
affairs, when the Syracusans sent an embassy to Corinth, 
their mother city, to ask for assistance. The Corinthians 
consented and Timoleon was chosen to take command of 
the expedition. 

Timoleon belonged to one of the noblest families of 
Corinth. A passion for the freedom of the state had 





SYRACUSE 65 


involved him in the most tragic misfortune, namely the 
murder of his elder brother, who would have made himself 
master of Corinth. Timoleon killed him with his own 
hand, and was consequently by no means reluctant to 
leave his native city. In fact the Corinthian senate 
appointed him to the command of the Sicilian expedition 
with the provision that if he conducted himself justly in 
the command they would regard him as a tyrannicide and 
honour him accordingly, but if otherwise they would 
punish him asa murderer. As it proved Timoleon behaved 
in the most exemplary manner. Arriving in Sicily with 
but ten triremes and seven hundred mercenaries he suc- 
ceeded after much hard fighting and the crushing of many 
plots, especially the machinations of Hicetas, tyrant of 
Leontinoi, in decisively defeating the Carthaginians on the 
Crimissus in 339 B.c. and in restoring liberty to every 
Greek city in Sicily. Though he was in reality the ruler of 
Sicily, for every state consulted him in every matter of 
importance, he refused to make himself despot anywhere, 
and lived as a private citizen, refusing any office—even 
in Syracuse, where he was regarded almost with worship 
and which he held in the hollow of his hand. He re- 
peopled the cities of Acragas and Gela which the Carthagin- 
ians had destroyed. Once when his public conduct was 
attacked in the assembly he replied by thanking the gods 
for answering his prayer that the Syracusans might enjoy 
freedom of speech. A short time before his death he 
became blind, but the Syracusans continued to honour 
him as before and took his advice upon every occasion. 
He died in 337 B.c. in the eighth year after his arrival in 
Sicily. He was buried in the Agora, where his monument 
was afterwards surrounded with porticoes and a gymnasium 
and was called after him the Timoleonteum. He was cer- 
tainly one of the greatest among the Greeks of his time. 
The period following the restoration of Timoleon was one 
of great prosperity for Syracuse but within a single gener- 
ation the city had fallen under the tyranny of Agathocles, 
which lasted from 317 B.c. to 289 B.c. Agathocles too 
adorned the city with splendid buildings, but after his 
death anarchy returned, till in 275 B.c. Hieron II made 


66 CITIES OF SICILY 


himself master. He reigned till 216 B.c. wisely and moder- 
ately, and, after a first encounter, in alliance with Rome 
now at grips with Carthage. Rome in 267 B.c. recognized 
Hieron II as king of Syracuse with the dependent towns 
of Acre, Helorus, Netum, Megara, Leontinoi and Tauro- 
menium. His reign was one of the most fortunate periods 
in the life of Syracuse. Theocritus, first among many 
poets, adorned his court, and the city attained its highest 
degree of splendour and magnificence. 

His grandson Hieronymous succeeded him and made the 
fatal error of exchanging the alliance of Rome for that of 
Carthage, and during the Second Punic War, in spite of the 
assassination of Hieronymous, Carthage maintained her 
ascendency. The two Syracusan captains, Hippocrates and 
Epicydes, shut the gates against the Roman general Mar- 
cellus and compelled him to begin the famous siege in 
214 B.c. which lasted for more than two years. 

That siege is chiefly memorable for the achievements of 
Archimedes of Syracuse, who by his superior science and 
skill destroyed or sunk the Roman ships with his engines. 
Marcellus had established a fortified camp at Leon on the 
shore of the bay of Thapsus, and it was from the little 
cove of Trogilus and perhaps by the Scala Greca, the hewn 
flight of steps on the north of Tyche, that he scaled the 
height, seized the gate at Hexapylum and stood at last on 
Epipole. One by one the forts and the quarters of the 
city fell into his hands from Euryalus to Neapolis, till only 
Ortygia remained. This held out till it was betrayed to 
him by a Spaniard named Mericus who had been entrusted 


among others with the defence. Marcellus behaved cruelly — 


and gave up the whole city to pillage, and in the confusion 
Archimedes was accidentally slain. The plunder was 
enormous, and it is said that the works of art, the pictures 
and statues which Marcellus carried to Rome to adorn his 
triumph, gave the Romans their first sight of the beauty of 
Greek art. 

From this time Syracuse became a mere provincial town 
in the Roman system. But the barbarity of Marcellus in 


stripping the city might seem to have been exaggerated, 
for Verres, as Preetor of Sicily in 73-71 B.c., found plenty to 


3 
4 
{ 





SYRACUSE 67 


loot there, and Cicero, whoimpeached him in 70 B.c. in his 
famous oration In Verrem, calls Syracuse “‘ the greatest of 
Greek cities and the most beautiful of all cities.’’ Cer- 
tainly all the great buildings, the works of more than a 
thousand years, still remained, and the great quarters of 
the town, Ortygia, Achradina, Tyche, Neapolis, were still 
crowded with houses and inhabitants. 

It was not Marcellus but Sextus Pompeius the son of the 
Triumvir who in 42 B.c. destroyed and dispeopled Syracuse, 
inflicting upon it injuries from which it never recovered. 
Little by little the mainland quarters were abandoned, 
and such was the decayed condition of the place that we 
find Augustus trying to repeople it and confining his efforts 
to the island and the part of the city immediately adjoining 
it in Achradina and Neapolis, where we still see the con- 
siderable remains of Roman buildings, such as the amphi- 
theatre, and of Roman restorations of Greek works, such 
as the Theatre.. 

So Syracuse continued a city of provincial importance 
and a strong place in the administration of the Empire 
and of Byzantium till in the year A.D. 878 it fell into the 
hands of the Saracens, the last city of Sicily to do so, and 
its citizens were one and all put to the sword, its fortifica- 
tions destroyed, and the whole city burnt to the ground. 
From this calamity it never recovered ; it merely continued 
_ to exist in the thousand years twixt then and now in the 
desolation we see to-day, the Island alone really inhabited, 
Achradina, Tyche, Neapolis and Epipole, its glory and 
its strength, dispeopled and uncultivated, a spare pasture- 
land of sheep and goats, from which for the most part even 
the ruins have crumbled away. 


III 
ORTYGIA 


However you come to Syracuse to-day, whether from the 
railway station, or from Villa Politi down the slope of 
Achradina, or by road from Catania or Girgenti, you find 


68 CITIES OF SICILY 


yourself, on entering, in the great waste place, covered 
with stray stones, rubbish and dust, and crossed by various 
and uncertain tracks, which was of old the Agora and the 
Forum of ancient Syracuse. Before you lies the Island— 
Ortygia, with the Lesser Harbour and the Great Harbour 
on either side, behind you lies Neapolis, to the left rises 
the plateau of Achradina with Tyche and Epipole above it, 
while behind the Great Harbour lie the marsh of Lysimeleia 
and the mouth of the Anapus, and beyond, Polichne and the 
Olympieion, and closing it on the far side the headland of 
Plemmyrion. This desolate and neglected open space, that 
was the Agora of the ancient city, is still as it were the key 
to all that is left of it. 

Vast as it is, it was of old vaster still, and surrounded by 
the most beautiful porticoes, which the elder Dionysius 
had built and of which Cicero speaks. Some fragments of 
broken columns surrounded by a sort of cage are, it might 
seem, all that remains of them. But the Agora certainly 
included the Timoleonteum, the monument and tomb of 
Timoleon, the beautiful remains of which are still to be 
seen in the so-called Ginnasio Romano behind the railway 
station. The Agora was closed towards the Island by a 
great fortified gate called the Pentapyla. This has dis- 
appeared. To-day you pass on to the island through a 
wide unobstructed modern street, Corso Umberto I, and 
crossing the bridge over the dock enter the Piazza Pancali. 

The Island of Ortygia, always the heart and soul of 
Syracuse, belonged to Artemis; it was always consecrated 
to her and it bore her name, for she was said to have been 
born in the grove of Ortygia near Ephesus. Diodorus 
tells us that when Persephone was a child in Enna, or ever 
Hades carried her away, she had for playmates the young 
Goddesses Artemis (Diana) and Athena (Minerva) and all 
three maids were vowed to virginity. They played together 
in the fields of Enna, gathering flowers, themselves the 
fairest flowers,and made arobe for their father Zeus. And 
living there they looked upon Sicily as their home and 
each by lot chose a spot to be peculiarly her own. To 
Athena Himera fell, to Persephone Enna itself, to Artemis 
the Island of Ortygia. 





SYRACUSE 69 


So the original seat of the colony which throughout its 
history remained the citadel and Acropolis of Syracuse was 
sacred to Artemis. 

_ Unlike most citadels it lay not above but below the rest 
of the city, its strength residing in the fact that it was an 
island: about a mile in length and less than half a mile in 
breadth, composed of rock, and later joined to the main- 
land by an artificial causeway and defended there by that 
fivefold gateway the Pentapyla, behind which, facing the 
outer city, the elder Dionysius constructed his great castle 
or fortress adjoining the docks in the Lesser Harbour. 
The fortifications of Charles V, which still remain, occupy 
it might seem much the same position. 

And since the Island was sacred to Artemis, ‘‘ The 
couch of Artemis ”’ as Pindar calls it, its chief temple was 
hers. Some remains of it may be seen, perhaps, not far 
from the Piazza Pancali, in the Via Diana, laid bare in 
1862. It was the most ancient Doric Temple in the Island 
and perhaps in Sicily, peripteros-hexastyle but with at least 
nineteen columns upon each flank. There still remain two 
complete columns upon the south, and fragments of others 
and of the architrave. 

Much more considerable remains may be found of the 
other temple which Cicero particularly notes as adorning 
the city in his day. This is the Temple of Athena, and its 
fortunate preservation to us is due to the fact that it has 
become, with scarcely more than the necessary additions, 
the Cathedral Church of the city, S. Maria delle Colonne. 
This transformation seems to have been first accomplished 
in the seventh century of our era by the Bishop Zosimus, 
who filled up the interspaces of the columns with walls, 
and consecrated the building for Christian use. 

The Cathedral stands on the highest ground in the island 
in a large piazza, Piazza del Duomo, at the other end of the 
Via Cavour from the Temple of Artemis. Save upon the 
north side you would not suspect from without that this 
was an ancient building at all, but there the great Doric 
columns and capitals are visible, and within the baroque 
building of the eighteenth century you may see much 
of the cella and may count certainly twenty-four of the 

6 


70 CITIES OF SICILY 


thirty-six columns which upheld the Temple. For this 
too was a peripteros-hexastyle temple raised upon a plat- 
form of three steps, 185 feet long by 75 feet broad, with 
fourteen columns upon each flank, dating from the sixth 
century B.c., and according to Diodorus, built under the 
government of the Geomori before Gelon came to Syracuse. 

It was too one of the most magnificent temples in Sicily. 
Its doors were covered with plates of gold and ivory and 
their beauty was famous throughout the Greek world. 
Within were many paintings, among them, according to 
Cicero, a series representing a battle of cavalry in the wars 
of Agathocles against Carthage and a series of portraits of 
the Despots and Kings of Sicily. On the summit of the 
Temple without was a shield, the shield of Athena; and 
this was the last thing the Syracusan sailor saw when he 
left home; for the southern sun shone full upon it and he 
was wont, it is said, in some ritual of his, to hold in his 
hands a vessel filled with fire from the altar of Hera so 
long as the shield of Athena was visible to him, 

Marcellus, when he gave Syracuse up to be plundered, 
spared this temple, but Verres took away all he could, the 
plates of gold and ivory from the doors, the pictures, the 
sculpture : Cicero especially mentions a lovely head of the 
Gorgon with snakes for hair. 

As one stands there to-day when the church has been 
stripped with some intention of restoration, it is with the 
secure knowledge that one or other of the gods has been 
worshipped in this building for not less than two thousand 
five hundred years without break or intermission. When 
the Parthenon at Athens was built by Pericles this temple 
was already more than a hundred years old. The nave of 
the present church was the cella of Athena, its font the 
sacred cratera in the Temple of Dionysos, over its threshold 
be sure Gelon and Dionysius and Timoleon have passed, 
and in the shadow of its columns A¢schylus, Plato and 
Theocritus have stood. It was already old when the 
Athenian fleet was destroyed in the Great Harbour close 
by, and its antique beauty saved it when Marcellus won 
the Island for Rome, and seeing how venerable it was and 
how dear to the gods, prevented its destruction. Nothing 





CATHEDRAL, SYRACUSE 


SYRACUSE 71 


else that remains in Syracuse can properly be compared 
with it. 

And indeed so far as the island is concerned, at any 
rate there is nothing else at all belonging to antiquity— 
unless it be the Fountain of Arethusa: but that has been 
so restored, built about and “‘ beautified ”’ that it is scarcely 
worth a visit. 

O Fountain Arethuse... 


It is not Milton alone who invokes what ages before his 
day had come conventionally to be the pastoral fountain 
of all fountains. Was it even Theocritus who began it, 
Theocritus who in his first idyl makes Daphnis address part 
of his farewell, Xaio’ ’Aoéowa. . . . 

For assuredly Theocritus as well as Homer was beloved of 
the fountains, andif the blind man ever drank of the Pega- 
sean Fount Theocritus had drained a draught of Arethuse. 
And then there is Virgil—if he indeed deserves in such 
company to be so much as mentioned at all—Virgil with his 


Extremum hune, Arethusa, mihi concede laborem, 


But what did he know about it ? The too smooth rhythm 
of the line belongs to ‘‘ smooth sliding Mincius ’’: his true 
fount: for his eclogues are no more than 


Mechanic echoes of Sicilian song. 


“Return Alpheus... .” 


“ Divine Alpheus who by secret sluse 
Stole under Seas to meet his Avethuse,” 


Yes, we can here dispense with Virgil. There is no room 
for him. Greek and English poetry have celebrated 
Arethusa, and the lovely song of Thcccriies is not lovelier 
than the English: 


“Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past, 
That shrunk thy streams; return Szcilian Muse, 
And call the Vales, and bid them hither cast 
Their Bels and Flourets of a thousand hues. 
Ye valleys low where the milde whispers use, 
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, 
On whose fresh lap the swart Star sparely looks, 


72 CITIES OF SICILY 


Throw hither all your quaint enameld eyes, 
That on the green terf suck the honied showres, 
And purple all the ground with vernal flowres. 
Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies, 
The tufted Crow-toe and pale Gessamine, 

The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat, 
The glowing Violet, 

The Musk-rose and the well-attir’d Woodbine, 
With Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed, 
And every flower that sad embroidery wears ; 
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed, 

And Daffadillies fill their cups with tears, 

To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies.” 


The Greek language itself could not bear Theocritus 
above Milton there. 

Who does not know the story of the river god Alpheus, a 
river of Elis, and the nymph Arethusa ? Howshe, pursued 
by Alpheus, was brought by Artemis here to Ortygia and 
metamorphosed into a fountain: and how he pursued her 
under the sea and there mixed his waters with hers; so 
that when sacrifices were offered at Olympia, when the 
river there was stained with blood, then too the Fountain 
Arethusa was stained also. And a silver cup thrown into 
the river in Elis would be found later in this fountain in 
Ortygia. 

That delightful story and the immense fame of the 
Fountain should surely have saved it a little from the 
neglect of the past and the attention of to-day. It is now 
carefully walled and grated about, planted with papyrus 
—why papyrus p—and filled with fat grey mullet. 

Nothing could be less Theocritan. Give me the quays 
and the sharp acrid smell of the fish stalls of Syracuse, the 
dark cavernous hovels of Achradina, the olives of Epipolz 
where the goatherd will share with me a cheese of Sicily, 
and I may play with his golden cicala in a little cage of 
rushes. Or give me the fat pastures of Anapus where there 
is a wood of sweet almonds not far from the sea, where 
Thyrsis pipes even yet. In all these places I shall find 
Theocritus ; but at the Fountain of Arethusa ...? No, 
what Virgil did to the Idylls, the Syracusans themselves 
have done to their Fountain... . 

The Fountain of Arethusa overlooks the Great Harbour, 


SYRACUSE 73 


indeed stands close to the extreme point of the island upon 
this side, opposite the great headland of Plemmyrion. 
From here the Syracusans closed the harbour mouth with 
their chained ships, from one point to the other, imprison- 
ing the Athenian fleet which they then destroyed. 

Close by and actually upon the seaward extremity of the 
island is the Castle built by the Byzantine Captain, George 
Maniaces, in 1038 and added to from time to time so that 
you have a fine Gothic doorway and window of the four- 
teenth century, a ruined Gothic hall and much work of the 
time of Charles V. This Castle was built upon\the site of a 
temple of Hera. Here was the altar from which the 
departing sailor took the fire which he only flung into the 
sea when he lost sight of the shield of Pallas on the top 
of the Temple of Athena. Not a stone of this Temple 
remains, nor of the Hexecontaclinus of which Diodorus 
speaks, a building of Agathocles, the massive granaries of 
which Livy tells us, the palace of Hieron where the Roman 
Preetors, among them Verres, lived. Nor is there any trace 
of the Greek walls. The remains of a tower however may 
be seen on the north side in the Lesser Harbour. 

There is left modern Syracuse. This is far more inter- 
esting and charming than at first appears. The narrow 
medizval-looking streets of the place are full of picturesque 
bits, a courtyard here, a balcony there, a window, a door- 

way, and one or two buildings are beautiful and charming. 
_ The Palazzo Montalto for instance, just out of the Piazza 
_Archimede, with its Gothic windows of the end of the 
fourteenth century ; the Palazzo Bellomo at the end of the 
Via Roma, the main street of modern Syracuse, a fine 
building of the fifteenth century where the medieval col- 
lections belonging to the Museum are now collected; the 
Palazzo Lanza with its lovely windows of the same period, 
in the Piazza Archimede ; the Palazzo Interlandi and the 
Casa Mezzi in Via Gelone: these are but some of the 
more striking buildings left in modern Syracuse from a 
better time for building than our own. But altogether 
they do not amount to very much. The chief interest of 
the place remains Greek, and one finds it difficult to realize 
that it ever had any other life. 


74 CITIES OF SICILY 


This impression is certainly confirmed by a visit to the 
Museum in the Piazza del Duomo. 

The Museum of Syracuse, Museo Nazionale, is in many 
ways the most important in Sicily, though it has little that 
will greatly interest the ordinary traveller. It is indeed 
rather an archeological museum than a museum of fine 
art, but it possesses a number of objects, chiefly Greek 
sculpture in marble and terra-cotta which from the esthetic 
point of view give it a considerable importance and cannot 
but delight even the most casual visitor. 

The Museum owes its origin toa cultured Syracusan, the 
late Cavaliere Saverio Landolina Nava who, in the beginning 


of the nineteenth century, made a collection of objects 


which he himself had excavated. These formed a nucleus 
and in 1811 a small archeological museum was inaugurated. 
The people of Syracuse assisted with gifts from time to time 
and a learned ecclesiastic, the Canon Lentinello, having 
formed a fine collection of Greek coins, this was acquired 
by the Commune upon his death and has been much 
augmented since by Professor Paolo Orsi, the present 
Director. To Professor Orsi indeed the Museum owes 
much of its present importance and usefulness. It is to 
him and to his predecessor Cavallari that by far the greater 
part of its prehistoric objects—its pre-Hellenic collections— 
are due and the splendid arrangement of everything and 
its display. Here at least it is easy to see and even examine 
everything that is shown. 

On the ground floor are arranged the larger objects, and 
the inscriptions, the architectural fragments, the sarcophagi, 
among them a famous one from the catacombs of $.Giovanni. 
Here too is collected what has been found of Greek sculp- 
ture and statues—astonishingly little you might think till 
you remember the infinite loot of Rome and the wars of 
the Byzantine and the Arab. Even so one receives a very 
poor impression of the artistic wealth of this Greek penta- 
polis, for even among those few things the best have been 
brought here from outside. That torso of a youth. for 
instance (23624 in Sala VI) of the early fifth century B.c. 
comes from Leontinoi; those two funereal reliefs from 
Acre; those fine sarcophagi of terra-cotta with their 


SYRACUSE 75 


internal decorations from Gela; and we are left with the 
magnificent colossal bust of Poseidon, the colossal bust of 
Persephone from the shrine at the Fount of Cyane, and a 
broken fragment of a priestess wearing the peplum which 
we presume to come from Syracuse itself. 

But the most famous statue in the Museum is undoubtedly 
Syracusan : though it is not Greek but Roman, a late copy 
or derivation of the work of Praxiteles—Aphrodite Anadyo- 
mene. 

Guy de Maupassant has written many pages in enthu- 
siastic praise of this work, and that is exactly what one 
might haveexpected. It is, he explains, woman exactly as 
she really is, as one likes her, as one desires her, as one 
wishes to take her in one’s arms. 

““ Elle est grasse, avec la poitrine forte, la hanche puis- 
sante et la jambe un peu lourde, c’est une Vénus charnelle, 
qu’on réve couchée en la voyant debout. Son bras tombé 
cachait ses seins ; de la main qui lui reste elle souléve une 
draperie dont elle couvre, avec un geste adorable, les charmes 
les plus mystérieux. . . . Ce geste simple et naturel, plein © 
de pudeur et d’impudicité, qui cache et montre, voile et 
révéle, attire et dérobe, semble définir toute ]’attitude de la 
femme sur la terre. Et le marbre est vivant. On le 
voudrait palper, avec la certitude qu’il cédera sous la main, 
comme de la chair. Les reins, surtout, sont inexprimable- 
ment animés et beaux. Ellese déroule avec tout son charme, 
cette ligne onduleuse et grasse des dos féminins qui montre 
dans la rondeur décroissante des cuisses et dans la légére 
-courbe du mollet aminci jusqu’ aux chevilles, toutes les 
modulations de la grace humaine . . . Ce torse admirable, 
en marbre de Paros,-est, dit-on, la Vénus Callipyge décrite 
par Athénée et Lampride, qui fut donnée par Héliogabale 
aux Syracusains. Elle n’a pas de téte! Qu’ importe! 
Le symbole en est devenu plus complet. C’est un corps 
de femme qui exprime toute la poésie réelle delacaresse . . . 
Elle est divine, non pas parce qu’elle exprime une pensée, 
mais seulement parce qu’elle est belle.” 

All this seems quite true and quite obvious and rather 
boring, like the statue, which may explain much in late 
manners that is difficult to understand : it certainly explains 


——_ 


76 CITIES OF SICILY 


one’s preference for the older, the archaic Greek art and why 
one ceases to be much interested after Pheidias. Yes, all 
this is quite true. And what does it mean? Does it 
not mean that this statue is so realistic that it has almost 
ceased to be a work of art ? 

On the upper floor are arranged the true riches of the 
Museum: the loot from the necropoli, from Pantalica, 
Castelluccio, Melilli, Augusta, Noto, Modica, Ragusa, 
Terranova, Pachino, Plemmerio, Thapsus, Caltagirone anda 
host of other places. Much, indeed most, of these infinitely 
various objects, vases, cups, lamps, tear-bottles, tomb 
furniture, votive offerings, bracelets, necklaces, rings, 
needles, jewellery, flint knives, bronze weapons and so 
forth are prehistoric and will have nothing to say to the 
ordinary traveller. 

Far more charming is the Ceramica di Siracusa and Megara 
in Sala XII, the Ceramica di Gela and Camarina in Sala 
XIII and above all the lovely terra-cottas from Syracuse, 
Megara Hyblea, Centuripe, Grammichele, Gela and 
Acragas in Sala XIV, XVand XVI. Many of these figurine 
among them the exquisite Danzatrice in Sala XV, the lovely 
veiled figure in Sala XIV (Arm. V. 1557), the dear little 


figure of one loosing her sandal in Sala XV (9527) are of © 


the very finest art of Greek Sicily, if indeed they do not 
come from Greece proper: while the exquisite heads, of 
Demeter for the most part, possibly votive, are unequalled 
in the whole island. These wonderfully modelled heads 
are generally archaic, of the most exquisite and delicate 
workmanship, and are quite as lovely as the pre-Periclean 
statues in the Acropolis Museum at Athens, though those 
are in marble and these in terra-cotta. It is admirable 
to see with what great works of art the Greeks in Sicily were 


continually surrounded even in the ordinary ways of life: — 
it is humiliating to realize that there is no one alive to-day ~ 


who could make such things, or even conceive such beauty : 
no not though the reward were to be a king’s ransom. 
Nor for that matter are there many to feel the need of 
them. 


> 


eee ee Oe eee eee ee ee Te eh me 


SYRACUSE 77 


IV 
ACHRADINA 


The original foundation of Syracuse had been upon the 
Island of Ortygia. Its first extension upon the mainland, 
its first quarter, of those four, of which it at length came 
to consist there, was Achradina. 

Achradina stretched from the Agora and the Marsh of 
Lysimeleia on the shore of the Great Harbour, over the 
eastern portion of the northern plateau where it meets the 
sea in lofty and precipitous cliffs of limestone. It included 
the whole of the eastern part of that plateau as far as the 
harbour of S. Panagia and within it were some of the most 
ancient and the finest buildings of the city, for it was the 
most important and the most extensive quarter of old 
Syracuse. It divides itself naturally into two parts, that 
which lies in the plain and that which lies upon the table- 
land. The whole was thickly populated and early defended 
by a wall, parts of which still remain upon the edge of the 
cliffs between the two small islands, scarcely more than 
rocks, of the Due Fratelli and the bay of S. Panagia, 

That part of Achradina which lay in the plain imme- 
diately opposite Ortygia included the Agora, the Lesser 
Harbour and the Great Harbour, with the dockyards and 
arsenals, It had at least one outer gate—the gate leading 
to Gela which Cicero calls the Porte Agragine, a title that 
seems to have puzzled modern historians, though it might 
seem clear enough as named from Acragas, Girgenti that 
is, long before Cicero’s day a far more important place 
than Gela, and standing, though more distant, upon the 
same road. Its situation however cannot be determined, 
and this is doubly unfortunate, for just outside it, Cicero 
tells us he found the neglected tomb of Archimedes. 
. Of the buildings of Achradina mentioned by Cicero, it is 

not only this gate and the tomb outside it which we miss ; 
scarcely one of them remains. Of the Agora proper, with 
its cloisters—porticoes—pulcherrime porticus, as he calls 
them, nothing whatever remains save the fragments of 
columns gathered together in that cage on the waste 


78 CITIES OF SICILY 


ground, and the Timoleonteum, which is fortunately in 
great part left tous. But where was the Temple of Olympian 
Zeus which stood here near the Agora, built by Hieron II, 
which must not be confused with the older temple to the 
same divinity at Polichne beyond the Anapus? Where 
was the Prytaneum, the common house of the state, where 
a perpetual fire was kept burning upon the altar and where 
important state guests were housed and entertained ? 
Not a vestige of it would seem toremain. Yet it was of the 
greatest beauty and possessed a famous statue of Sappho 
which Verres stole away. It was a work of Silanion and 
one of the finest things anywhere to be found. And where 
was the Senate House which also stood here in Achradina ? 

Nothing of all this is to be found to-day except the 
Timoleonteum, just behind the railway station on the road 
to Noto. It was the great sepulchral monument erected 
by Syracuse to the memory of Timoleon, the most noble 
of her rulers and restorers. It consists of a palestra, 
and close by is the base of a great construction, the mauso- 
leum of Timoleon, with many fragments of exquisite 
workmanship, pieces of cornices and capitals and carving, 

One leaves it with reluctance, and crossing once more 
the dusty Agora, makes one’s way uphill to Villa Politi 
which stands over the only other monument of the Greek 
time left in Achradina: I mean the great Latomia dei 
Cappucini, certainly the finest of these vast excavations 
which are so characteristic of Syracuse. 

The Latomie of which there are the Latomia di S. Venera 
the Latomia Casale, the Latomia del Paradiso, and this 
called after the convent of Capuchins close by, were the 
quarries of Syracuse, from the stone of which the whole 
city was built. The word is as old as Thucydides, who 
tells us that the many thousands of prisoners taken by 
the Syracusans after the defeat of the Athenians and the 
destruction of their fleet and armies in 413 B.C. were 
imprisoned é» taig Aotouiasc—in the stone quarries, 
At first he says they were treated harshly by the Syracusans. 
Crowded as they were in large numbers in a deep and 
narrow place, by day the sun and the suffocating heat 
caused them distress, there being no roof; while the nights 





THE LATOMIA DEI CAPPUCCINI 





SYRACUSE 79 


were on the contrary autumnal and cold so that the sudden 
change engendered illness. Besides they were so cramped 
for space that they had to do everything in the same 
place ; moreover the dead were heaped together one upon 
another, some having died of wounds, others from the 
changes in the temperature or like causes, so that there 
was a stench that was intolerable. At the same time they 
were oppressed by hunger and thirst—the Syracusans 
having for eight months given them only a half pint of 
water and a pint of food a day; and of all the other 
ills which men thrown into such a place would be likely 
to suffer there was none that did not befall them. 

Some of those thus confined would recite a chorus or a 
speech from the poets to the jeering multitude who locked 
down upon them, and a few of these, partly by reason of 
their skill, partly by reason of the beauty of the verses, 
were released, and others taken into the service of some 
wealthy Syracusan or even allowed to return to Hellas. 
It was, we are told, the verses of Euripides which most 
moved the Syracusans to mercy, and some of those who 
owed their lives to the genius of the poet returned to 
Athens and thanked him. 

Those vast quarries, more than a hundred feet deep and 
open to the sky, have for long now been planted with every 
sort of tree and flowering shrub and turned into the most 
lovely of sub-tropical gardens where the wind can never 
spoil the blossom and many a tall cypress counts the 
hours. It was the Cappucini who began this marvellous 
transformation, taught no doubt by nature and by chance : 
they used this place so vast, so great, so secluded, as a 
place of hermitage almost, where one might lose oneself 
and the world. Others have bettered what they began, 
till to-day the Latomia is a paradise where all the winter 
long without fear of the wind one may lie in the sun, in 
a wonderful garden of flowers, amid cascades of bougain- 
villea where avenues of cypress make a shade and the 
olive and the agave and the cactus grow among the fan- 
tastic precipices. But for all its beauty and silence one is 
never happy there for long. It seems to be haunted by the 


1 This was half the amount given to slaves. 


80 CITIES OF SICILY 


ghosts of those Athenian lads who starved there in scorn 
so long ago, and its silence is broken by their sorrowful 
voices. It is strange that of all the deeds of Syracuse, so 
many of them beautiful, heroic and patient, it should. be 
this cruelty that is remembered, that cannot be put out of 
mind ; so that the very name of the city heard to-day in a 
far country brings back at once those Athenian youths 
reciting Euripides to a jeering multitude. 

Other Latomie there are in Achradina which are worth a 
visit, though none I think so beautiful and certainly none 
of so poignant a memory as the Latomia dei Cappucini. 
The road past the Villa Politi and the second road out of it 
to the right lead to one of them, the Latomia Casale, with 
its beautiful cypresses. Thence following the same road 
past S. Giovanni, the first road to the left brings one 
to the Villa Landolina in another small Latomia. 

That church of S. Giovanni is as it happens by far the 
most interesting church in Syracuse, as it is the most 
picturesque. A ruin you might think as you note its 
broken gable, porch and beautiful rose window, and in fact 
what you see there is all that remains of the church of 1182. 
But once within, a flight of steps descends to something 
far older than the restored church above ground. Here 
is not only the church or crypt of S. Marciano, but vast 
catacombs larger than those of Rome, and, more inter- 
esting still, the stylobate of a Greek temple, the Temple of 
Dionysos, with some of the bases of the columns. 

The church or crypt of S. Marciano, where you may still 
see the tomb of that saint who here suffered martyrdom, 
and certain remains of rude frescoes, is said to have been 
that in which S, Paul preached when on his way from 
Jerusalem to Rome after his appeal to Cesar. He came 
in the Castor and Pollux from Malta where he had wintered 
three months, ‘“‘and landing at Syracuse we tarried there 
three days.’’1 It would be more interesting to stand 

1 Acts xxviii. 12. Three days! The usual sojourn of the tourist 


in Syracuse. One wonders what S. Paul did in Syracuse. He ~ 


might have seen the city still in its glory of Temple and Portico. 
But I suppose, like Gallio on another occasion, he cared for none 
of these things. That is what annoys one so much in reading this 
Apostle who had such fine opportunities of seeing some of the 


~ 


—— a 


ee ee. ee ee) oe 


se ies ee BR 


, ree? | 


SYRACUSE 81 


in this place if, as we see it, it did not date rather from 
the fourth century than the first. However, for those who 
are interested in such things—and who is not ?—the 
catacombs hard by will reward any amount of trouble to 
see. Not that they really differ from those in Rome, save 
that they are larger and less cramped—the main pas- 
sage being ten feet wide—and have several large circular 
halls which you do not find elsewhere. 

These catacombs date I suppose from the fourth cen- 
_ tury; but earlier may be found a few yards away at 
S. Maria di Gest, which date from the middle of the third 
century, and these are the oldest in Syracuse. No one 
knows the extent of, these curious burial places; they are 
said torun for many milesinalldirections. Theyinevitably 
recall the prehistoric tombs with which the whole island is 
honeycombed : so visibly in Sicily do the dead outnumber 
the living. 

As well worth seeing as the church of S. Marciano or 
the catacombs of S. Giovanniis the church of S. Lucia which 
can be reached in a few minutes from S. Maria di Gesu. 
The church, dating from the eleventh century, of which 
however only the western entrance remains, is that of the 
patron saint of Syracuse, S. Lucia, the child who suffered 
here in the end of the third century. Like S. Agatha of 
Catania she is also always invoked at Mass, for her name 
too appears upon the diptych in the Canon. The church 
itself is devoid of interest, but you pass from it by a sub- 
terranean passage out of the south transept to the octagonal 
chapel, Cappella del Sepolcro, indeed the old Baptistery, 
which is now half underground. Here is a recumbent 
figure of the saint by some pupil of Bernini; but more 
interesting by far, on the stairway leading into the chapel 
are two magnificent twelfth-century crucifixes which I 
am glad not to have missed. They are by far the most 
precious works of art in the city, apart from those of the 
Greek time. 


loveliest things in the world. Even in Athens he behaved like a 
barbarian and does not seem to have liked what he took the 
trouble to see. And this was the man who was in possession in 
some sort of the religion of the future! 


82 CITIES OF SICILY 


Vv 
NEAPOLIS 


It was from Villa Politi, again past Villa Landolina, that 
I made my way into Neapolis, which lies on the southern 
slope of Achradina towards the plain. 

As its name implies, Neapolis is the New City, the latest 
quarter of Greek Syracuse, of which however it soon grew 
to be perhaps the most splendid part, as little by little the 
Island became more and more of a fortress. It originated 
in the suburb of Temenites, which was as old I supposeas 
Achradina and certainly older than the Athenian Expedi- 
tion. Temenites grew up round the sanctuary of Apollo 
Temenites, the god, that is, ‘‘ of the sacred precincts ”’ and 
so I suppose of the wall. This temple or shrine seems 
to have stood on a height, possibly the height above the 
Theatre, and contained a precious statue of the gad which 
Verres was unable to remove by reason of its size but which 
Tiberius is said to have carried off to Rome. Near by 
stood the Temples—possibly the double Temple—of 
Demeter and Persephone, but these, like the sanctuary of 
Apollo, have altogether disappeared. 

Entering Neapolis as I did from the plateau of Achradina, 
the first thing I came upon lying back from the road on 
the left was the Roman Amphitheatre. This is a vast 
building in the form of an eccentric ellipse cut out of the 
hillside with an arena larger than that of Verona and very 
considerable remains. It lies charmingly amid gardens 
from which the whole building is very well seen. Probably 


a work of the time of Augustus, measuring 140 metres by 


119, it was entered by a portal at each extremity and is 


surrounded by a lofty parapet above which the seats are q 


cut tier above tier from the rock. In the midst is a large 
basin served from cisterns under the house of the custode 
on the other side of the road, possibly for naumachie, 
and vaulted corridors surround the arena under the para- 
pet. Of all such buildings I have seen, among them those 


at Verona and Pompeii, this is by far the best built and the © . 


most charming : perhaps because it is in all probability the 
work of Greek builders. 





SYRACUSE 88 


After leaving the amphitheatre a walk of a hundred yards 
or so brought me to the entrance of the Latomia del 
Paradiso on the right of the road. It seems altogether to 
lack the charm of that of the Capuchins and indeed of 
S. Vénera and Casale, but if it has not the delicious beauty 
of those marvellous gardens it possesses in the ‘‘ Ear of 
Dionysius’ and the Grotto of the Rope Makers two 
interesting curiosities they cannot match. 

The Latomia is a vast excavation in the rock of the 
plateau which here rises to a sheer height of about 130 
feet, overhung by a most luxuriant growth and vegetation 
of all kinds. It was of course, like the other Latomie, one 
of the quarries of Syracuse. These vast excavations, use- 
less for all other purposes, must have seemed especially 
adapted for prisons, and just as the Syracusans used the 
Latomia dei Cappucini as a prison for their Athenian 
captives, so were they all, and, it seems, from an early 
period, employed as prisons, and, later, as prisons for 
criminals from all over Sicily. Cicero speaks of them in 
thissense. ‘‘ You have allheard,’’ he says, ‘‘ of the Syracu- 
san stone quarries. Many of you are acquainted with 
them. They are indeed vast and splendid; the work of 
the old kings and tyrants. They are cut out of the rock, 
excavated to a marvellous depth by the labour of great 
multitudes of men. Nothing can be made or imagined 
so close against all escape, so hedged in on all sides, so 
safe for keeping prisoners in. Into these quarries men are 
commanded to be brought even from other cities in Sicily 
if they have to be kept in custody.”’ 4 

He goes on later in his Oration against Verres to speak 
more particularly of this Latomia, which we call, it might 
seem in irony, “‘ del Paradiso.’’ At least I suppose it is 
to this Latomia he refers, as “‘ that prison which was built 
at Syracuse by that most cruel tyrant Dionysius.’’ Tra- 
dition at any rate is on the side of Cicero, and in fact the 
whole story of the ‘‘ Ear of Dionysius ”’ rests on no other 
foundation than tradition, which however is not traceable 
beyond the sixteenth century. 

The story goes that Dionysius the Elder caused a cavern 

1 Cicero: In Verrem v, 27. 


84 CITIES OF SICILY 


in the shape of an ear to be excavated in the loftiest wall of 
the Latomia, in such a manner that the softest whisper in 
the cave could be overheard by himself or his officer in an 
apartment above. There he intended to confine all his 
personal enemies or those whom he suspected of being so. 
And when all was well finished in order that his secret 
might be kept he put all the workmen employed upon it to 
death. 

There is of course no foundation for this very pleasing 
story, nor in truth are the qualities of this cavern such as 
tradition ascribes to them. Like every one who has visited 
the place I was struck at once as I approached that vast 
excavation by the curious likeness the opening bears to a 
human ear and still more impressed by the enormous 
multiple echo within. A bugle blown there re-echoes 
again and again till you seem to hear a complete military 
band. A canon sung there resounds exquisitely like a 
phrase from a motet by Palestrina or Vittoria. A piece of 
- paper lightly torn there sounds like the report of a rifle ; 
and the voice though it be no more than a whisper is like the 
voice of a multitude. Nothing more curious is to be found 
in Sicily: the effect being much greater though far less 
beautiful than the magical echo in the Baptistery at Pisa. 

I was not able to ascend to the chamber where Dionysius 
is said to have sat to hear what was really thought of him, 
for I was told that it was inaccessible: but the custode 
assured me, and I can very well believe it, that the multi- 
plication of sound is so elaborate and confusing that noth- 
ing said in the cavern can be distinguished above by reason 
of the confusion of sounds. 

Quite apart from its supposed purpose, the Ear of 
Dionysius has much of interest, and can, should the 
traveller have the inclination, as I had, be put to an 
exquisite use by employing three or four singers to sing 
there, plain chant and falstbordoni. Theeffectis beautiful. — 

This cavern is 18 feet wide and 58 feet high and runs ~ 
into the hill in the shape of a capital S. a 

A little farther on in the Latomia is the Grotta dei — 
Cordari, a long pillared cavern often flooded, used by the ’ 
ropemakers. % 





SYRACUSE 85 


On coming out of the Latomia del Paradiso I found on the 
opposite side of the road the remains of the vast Ara of 
Hieron II. It is said to be 640 feet long and 75 feet wide, 
and is supposed to have served at the annual festival to 
celebrate the fall of the tyrant Thrasybulus in 466 B.c., 
when 450 bulls were offered to Zeus in sacrifice. But if 
that be so, I do not understand how it can have been built 
by Hieron II who reigned two hundred years after this 
event. Thrasybulus was the younger brother of Gelon 
and Hieron, the earlier tyrants of Syracuse. Perhaps 
Hieron II restored the altar; but why should he? Dio- 
dorus however distinctly suggests if he does not actually 
assert that the Ara was the work of Hieron. Possibly the 
true explanation may be that it was built to celebrate the 
deliverance of Syracuse and Sicily from tyrants by Timoleon. 
Diodorus 1 speaks of it generally as one of the great works 
which had been constructed in Syracuse as the result of the 
prosperity with which the pacification of Timoleon endowed 
Sicily: the whole passage is very general and therefore 
obscure. 

And now on that wonderful spring day I came to what 
when all be said is by far the greatest and most moving 
Greek monument left in Syracuse—the Theatre. When 
I first saw those grey semi-circular tiers—tier above tier 
hewn from the hillside—I confess my heart came into 
my mouth. I think it must be so with every one and 
especially if, as was my case, this is the first Greek theatre 
he has seen. Before examining it closely I climbed up 
to the Nympheum above it, past the Torre del Teatro to 
see the view it embraced. There before me as before 
the ancient spectators lay the city itself, the island Ortygia 
visible in its whole extent and of course far less beautiful 
to-day than of old when its white painted temples rose up 
above the houses and the great gateway the Pentapylon 
closed the city. I saw the entrance to the Lesser Har- 
bour, towered once, the Great Harbour in its whole extent 
as far as the farther headland of Plemmyrion, together with 
that low, curved shore, the whole vale of the Anapus and 
beyond the Temple of Olympian Zeus. 

1 Diodorus xvi, 83. 
7 


86 CITIES OF SICILY 


When I had seen all this—the noble background—but 
oh how changed—of every play, before which was per- 
formed alike the Agamemnon or the Persians or the Gidipus 
or the Lysistrata : when I had seen all this in the sunshine 
and thought a little upon it, I came down to the orchestra, 
and upon the site of the stage I began to examine this 
building certainly for us, at least as sacred as a temple. 

This, like almost every other Greek theatre in the world 
is cut out of the hillside, here out of the face of the plateau, 
where it slopes steeply but not precipitously to the plain 
about a thousand yards from the shore of the Great Har- 
bour. 

Nearly semicircular in form the ¢heatrum proper is hewn 
out of the rock in a series of sixty concentric semicircles of 
which forty-five remain, decreasing in size from the top 
to the bottom where the lower seats were covered with 
slabs of white marble. It is divided in its whole breadth 
by two passages or precinctiones one broad and one narrow 
running round the theatrum parallel with the seats or 
benches. In these passages when the theatre was full 
many would stand, for the inner side of each passage 
formed a wall below the upper rows of seats and here in 
some theaires niches were hewn to contain bronze vessels 
to increase the sound of the voices coming from orchestra 
and stage. Through the rows of seats from top to bottom 
are built flights of steps by which the audience ascended 
from the lower to the higher seats. But these steps 
run in a Straight line continuously only from one precintio 
to another. Those in the next series of seats are placed 
just between the two flights of the series below. Thus 
these stairways divide the Theatre proper into a number 
of compartments or cunet so called because they resemble 


cones with the tops cut off. Some of these cunei are still 


inscribed in capital letters with the names of Hieron and the 
two queens Philistis and Nereis, with that of Zeus and 
Heracles and it is said with the epithet Higedé» which may 
have referred to the festive nature of the occasion: the 
feast of Dionysos. 

Unfortunately the ¢heatrum is incomplete here as every- 
where else. The highest rows of seats are missing, and 





GREEK THEATRE, SYRACUSE 





SYRACUSE 87 


of course the covered portico which rose above them and 
which probably helped to improve the acoustic qualities 
of the building. No roof covered the theatrum or the 
orchestra, but it is probable that, as in a bull ring to-day, 
awnings were stretched to shield the better seats, at any 
rate, from the sun. 

The entrances to the theatrum were partly underground. 
Some of them are quite visible to-day and the upper 
rows were no doubt accessible from above. 

The Theatre of Syracuse is not less than 440 feet in dia- 
meter and is said to have held 24,000 persons. It was thus 
not only the largest in Sicily as Cicero tells us, but larger 
than the theatre of Dionysos at Athens. It was however 
much smaller than the theatres at Epidaurus, Megalopolis, 
Argos and Ephesus. 

The inscriptions I noticed on the cunet are evidently of 
the time of Hieron II who may well have restored the 
theatre, but it is far older than that. It seems to have 
been erected by Gelon or Hieron IJ in the fifth century B.c. 
_ If this be so, it is {one of the oldest as well as one of 
_ the least imperfect in the world, though of course it has 
- suffered restoration at the hands of the Romans. 

Unhappily, though the orchestra remains, nothing at all 
is left of the stage. In the centre of the supposed circle of 
the orchestra stood the altar of Dionysos, the thymele, 
which was generally built of boards and was of course 
much nearer the stage than it was to the theatrum. It was 
ascended on all sides by steps and thus stood on a raised 
platform which was often occupied by the leader of the 
Chorus, the flute-player and the rhabdophori. The promp- 
ter or monitor was placed before this structure so that he 
faced the stage and was not seen by the audience. The 
Chorus was arranged round the ¢hymele or rather between 
it and the stage. 

Standing there in the silence of evening, in the midst of 
these ruins, these broken fragments, this spoiled but still 
sacred place, what voices one asks oneself have these 
stones heard, and to what words and to what verses have 
these walls re-echoed? A®schylus certainly has looked 
upon that theatrum, has stood in that orchestra; these 


88 CITIES OF SICILY 


rocks have heard his voice. For the tyrant of Syracuse, 
Hieron I, we know, he wrote his lost play The Women 
of Aetna, we know that here in Syracuse The Persians was 
played, not indeed for the first time, but it was played to- 
gether with the rest of the trilogy with which he had been 
victorious at Athens in 472 B.c. He also composed here 
other plays, but of which they were we are ignorant. 
No doubt this hill has heard the voice of the watchman, 
the cry of Agamemnon, and the lamentable voice of the 
daughter of Priam, whose throat the perfidious Clytem- 
nestra cut beside him. The words of Antigone too, the 
voice of Electra: no doubt these walls have heard them. 
Nor have they forgotten the laughter of Lysistrata, surely 
an irresistible thing—after the failure of the Expedition 
to which it refers; and the Peace and the Birds. ... 
Slowly the sun sets over the wine-faced sea ; purple is it 
or mixed gold and crimson? Night is coming. In the 
tawny Street of Tombs it is already dark ; the glow of the 
gaunt honeycombed rock but makes darker the emptiness 
of the empty tombs. In the Nymphzum I can hear the 
water slowly running as it has run for thousands of years. 
Somewhere, darkling among the olives, the heavy laurels 
or the vines, somewhere a bird sings, ah, the nightingale .. . 
Do you remember, do you remember, the words of 
Antigone in the Colonus? yégos 6’ 68’ ieods. . . . 


But where we stand is surely holy ground 
A wilderness of laurel, olive, vine; 

Within a choir of songster nightingales 
Are warbling. On this native seat of rock 
Rest; thou hast travelled far... 


VI 
EPIPOL 


There are two, in fact three, ways of approaching Epipole, 
the loftiest and most western part of the plateau, crowned 
at its farthest point by the greatest Greek fortress in the 
world, the Castle of Euryalus. For you may go by the 


Tee 7 a ae ees | ay! a a 





"oF ene nee ee ee Aa 


SYRACUSE 89 


lower road, the “‘ Old Road,’’ under the southern escarp- 
ment of the tableland, the road to Floridia, and presently 
take a by-way up to Euryalus; or you may follow the 
road to Catania out of Syracuse and leave it for the ‘‘ New 
Road ’”’ that follows the aqueduct, just before the Casa 
dei Gesuiti, and so proceed over the plateau itself within 
the southern wall of Dionysius, to Euryalus ; or you may 
follow the Catania road right across the plateau and descend 
the northern slope by the bay of Trogilus ; then just before 
you come to the Scala Greca you leave it for a by-way and 
proceed all the way under the northern wall of Dionysius 
between the plateau and the sea, to Euryalus at last. 

Each of these ways has its own beauties and advantages. 
The “old road’ gives you the valley of the Anapus and 
the farther hills ; the ‘‘ new road ”’ by the Casa dei Gesuiti 
gives you something of the plateau and the valley too; 
the northern road by the Scala Greca gives you the sea 
and the sea shore, Thapsus and the olives that are older 
than Christianity, and infinite fields of flowers, the 
asphodel, the anemone. You go by one and return by 
another. 

It was the wind that generally decided the matter for 
me, for if it was from the south I went under the northern 
escarpment but if from the north then I chose the “‘ old 
road’ to the south. The shadier and least dusty way is 
that to the north. 

I shall not easily forget the first morning I drove out 
by Villa Politi and following the by-ways across Achradina 
- came into the straight Catania road over Tyche and followed 
it. Presently just where the road began to turn we came 
to the northern edge of the tableland where it slopes steeply 
towards the sea. No one who has seen it can ever forget 
that view: it is not only beautiful in itself, but there is 
added to it something from the mind, some memory of 
what till then has only dwelt in the imagination, living 
there since boyhood from the pages of Thucydides. For 
that turn of the road suddenly gives you the whole of 
that storied shore; to your right the promontory of Tro- 
gilus, Capo S. Panagia, below you the little bay where 
the Athenians landed, the strange peninsula of Thapsus 


90 CITIES OF SICILY 


under shelter of which lay the Athenian fleet, the blue 
Ionian as far as Augusta, the mountains of Hybla, and, 
over all, smoking Etna, a pyramid of snow floating in the 
sky. How often have I lain a whole morning through, 
in the shade of the trees there, in a world of flowers, Thucy- 
dides beside me and thought myself blessed. 

But on that first morning I was for Euryalus. Slowly 
in sight of that sea we wound down the hill and presently 
leaving the Catania road followed the by-way on the left 
across a waste of fields scattered with the blue anemone, 
till, at a lovely turn of the way beneath the steep escarp- 
ment we halted under the olives, and we made our way 
through the tall asphodel up a slope of broken rock which 
presently became a vast flight of steps hewn in the lime- 
stone and leading to the summit—the Scala Greca. 

There could be no doubt for a moment that this stair- 
way was the work of man, the work of Syracuse, nor that 
it led to the northern or sea gate of Tyche, Hexapylon. 
And surely it was by these steps both the Athenians and 
the Romans climbed the height, the Romans from their 
fortified camp of Leon when after a siege and blockade 
of more than two years Marcellus at last succeeded in 
entering Tyche. 

And now returning to the road we followed it ever more 
eagerly as winding among most ancient olives, closer and 
closer under the ruined walls of the escarpment, it climbed 
to the summit of the plateau, and there, in chaos now, 
but still in majesty, upreared Euryalus its broken towers 
threatening the soft sky. 

It was from those towers and the great walls which still 
stand about them that I turned to the expected landscape. 

To the west upon its narrow ridge stood up the look-out 
of the Belvedere, its village at its feet against the vast 
flat tableland thrust out like a promontory, of the Monti 
Climiti—the Thymbris of Theocritus. To the north, the 
sea stretched away to Augusta past Thapsus and the hills 
of honied Hybla. To the south lay the wide vale of the 
Anapus dusky with orchards, ramparted with mountains, 
among which here and there shone out a town, Floridia, 
Solarino, Sortino perhaps. And last to the east my eyes 





SYRACUSE 91 


sought Syracuse, the island of Ortygia and the Great 
Harbour between it and Plemmyrion. And all between 
lay the plateau Epipole—a vast emptiness guarded still 
by the ruined walls of Dionysius, and the dark ruin piled 
on ruin, the gigantic fortress of Euryalus. 
’ But those walls—they seemed to stretch for miles, hewn 
stone tumbled upon hewn stone in enormous overthrow ; 
squared block piled upon squared block, strewn down the 
steep slopes to north and south or standing, still indestruc- 
tible, upon the escarpment. The transitory wind that 
blew shrewdly about them, the frail flowers whispering 
and blowing among them, the asphodel, the anemone, 
seemed to emphasize their permanence, their continuance ; 
to establish their triumph. 

Musing there upon the fortress it is easy to see what 
Epipole was. Epipole, literally I suppose the place ‘“‘ at 
the top’”’ was at first all this great triangular plateau 
which gradually slopes down from its apex at Euryalus 
to its base upon the western wall of Achradina. But when 
the lower part of the plateau came to be inhabited and the 
quarters of Tyche and Neapolis established and drawn 
within the city, the name was confined to that part of it 
which lay outside them, the highest part of this table- 
land. And in fact Epipole altogether differed from every 
other part of the city, if only in this, that it never seems 
to have been populated. It was, so it might seem, nothing 
but a military quarter, walled on the north and south by 
the elder Dionysius and wholly dependent upon the great 
_ fortress at its peak. It was the outer defence of Syracuse, 
and, if not always as empty as it is to-day, never certainly 
covered with buildings, with houses, whose foundations 
you will seek in vain. There is nothing upon Epipole, 
nothing but its broken walls, its fortress, the shepherd 
and his sheep, the flowers and the wind. 

Those walls however and that fortress are enough. They 
are together one of the most astounding Greek works in 
existence, and the fortress, Euryalus, is probably the best 
example? left us of an ancient fortress or castle designed both 


11It may be compared with Eleuthere above the road from 
Eleusis to Thebes in Greece proper. 


92 CITIES OF SICILY 


as a citadel and as the apex of a defensive position ; built 
here to secure the approach to Epipolz from this quarter. 

It was the wisdom of the elder Dionysius that established 
it. In truth the Athenian expedition had shown the vital 
necessity of a fortress at this spot and Dionysius, im- 
mediately upon his establishment as tyrant, began its 
erection. Not a moment too soon: for the Carthaginian 
onslaught which followed the Athenian defeat was flung 
back before it when it had laid low every other Greek city 
in Sicily. That defence proved its value as the head 
of the defences of Syracuse; its value as a citadel was 
demonstrated in the attack of Marcellus when Euryalus 
was held by a separate garrison after the capture of the 
walls of Epipole, threatening the army of Marcellus 
then attacking Achradina, in the rear. 

Of most such places the fame exceeds the impression 
you receive when youseethem. It is not so with Euryalus. 
As you pass up and down those vast subterranean corridors 
hewn out of the living rock or built of wrought stone, 
from court to court, from hall to hall, from chamber to 
chamber, from outwork to outwork, those five great broken 
towers rise up and seem to threaten the very sky; and 
as you gaze at it again from afar it seems to block the mind. 

It is little that our modern artillery and high explosive 
would make nothing of its strength; it is everything 
that the weapons of its day, the sword, the spear, the bow, 
the catapult and the battering ram were obviously power- 
less to move it, and proved in fact less formidable than 
the wind and the rain. It has been too much even for 
the earthquake, and still stands there square upon earth, 


and to the seeing eye perhaps one of the most formidable — | 


things upon it. 

It is good to clamber about those broken walls, to sit 
among those vast lines of ruin looking over Thapsus towards 
Megara, or over the Anapus to the Great Harbour and 


Ortygia, while through the long afternoon the shepherd leads © 


his sheep among the stones from pasture to pasture. 
Wandering thus aimlessly from side to side I came by 
chance upon the one oasis of this beautiful desert that is 
Epipole. I mean the Latomia del Filosofo where it is 


we se a ae 





SYRACUSE 93 


said that Dionysius imprisoned the poet Philoxenus for 
laughing at his verses. Dionysius did well, for looking 
upon these stones I cannot think him less than a poet. 
And then he could build with words too. His tragedies 
were not unsuccessful even at Athens, and did he not win 
the first prize at the Lenaea with a play called The Ransom 
of Hector? It had been a play of A%schylus too. Both 
are for ever lost. And all the verses of Dionysius like 
the verses of Philoxenus have perished: only these stones 
remain. 

And so thinking of that ill chosen subject for a tragedy 
The Ransom of Hector, for indeed Homer has written it once 
and for all, and I wonder what even Eschylus could have 
made of it after those incomparable pages in the twenty- 
fourth book of the Iliad, I continued on my way afoot 
along the length of Epipole; the pasture land of sheep 
and goats. Infinite flocks there seemed to be moving 
across the tableland, and scarcely discernible among the 
stones, till you came almost upon them and the sheep dogs 
came barking and baying and circling around you showing 
their teeth. Fear quickened my memory and it came to 
me that I had learned how to deal with these brutes in 
the pages of Theocritus. So I stooped and picked up a 
stone and off they made yelping—baying as Theocritus 
says for the bayings sake. 

And so I came at length to the Scala Greca and evening 
began to fall. And the shepherd and the goatherd came 
by and folded their flocks in the great caverns at the end 
of the day. But I waited there for the sunset to stain 
the snows of Etna and die upon the sea; till like an 
exquisite ghost, like a vision in a world beyond our sight 
Etna faded away and the sea itself might rather be heard 
than seen. 

Then I made my way by the broken, walled roads, 
hither and thither, across Achradina, back to the city. 


CHAPTER VII 
ROUND ABOUT SYRACUSE 


I 
THE FOUNTAIN OF CYANE 


F all Sicilian cities I have loved Syracuse best, 
() not only for its own sake, its so individual beauty, 

the nobility of its situation, its manifold treasures, 
its unrivalled past ; but also for the interest and delight 
of its landscape, the charm of its walks, the beauty of 
the surrounding country. And so I shall set down here 
for remembrance, very briefly, a few of the walks and 
excursions I like best. 

Every one I suppose who comes on a visit to Syracuse, 
however brief be his stay goes to the Fountain of Cyane: 
that delicious source beyond the Olympieum in the wide 
vale of the Anapus. 

It used to be the rule to visit this abode of the Nymph 
all the way by boat from the Great Harbour, but the 
canalization of the Anapus and its embankment has made 
this way of approach much less enjoyable than of old. 
It is usual now to drive all the way from Syracuse as far 
as the second bridge over the Anapus and there to take 
a boat for the all too brief journey up the Cyane stream. 

You leave the city by the Noto road, past the Timoleon- 
teum and after traversing the famous marsh of Lysimeleia 
cross the Anapus and the Cyane by the Ponte Grande. 
Once across the bridge you turn immediately to the right 
up the high embanked stream, and in about a mile, after 
passing the railway, you come to the second bridge. It 
is just here you find the boat upon the Cyane. 

The stream which is of some depth, especially for © 

94 





ROUND ABOUT SYRACUSE 95 


Sicily, is a considerable body of water abounding in 
mullet ; it runs swiftly. The bottom is clearly seen all 
the way and is covered with a thick growth of flags and 
weeds. The stream is not only swift and deep, but narrow, 
and the rower has often a hard, and always a difficult, 
task to manceuvre the heavy boat against it, between the 
ever thickening foliage on the banks. 

Presently the first papyrus comes in sight and you soon 
find yourself passing between tall groves of this strange 
Egyptian plant, introduced here asit is said by the Saracens,1 
and here alone still growing freely, in all Europe. 

The curious tufted green reed, which in ancient times 
was widely cultivated in the Nile Delta, but which is now 
extinct in Lower Egypt, grows here to a height of about 
twelve feet. It is of course famous because the Egyptians 
made a kind of paper or rather writing material from it. 
The curious and characteristic long-tufted head of the 
plant which is not very happily I think likened by Pliny 
to a thyrsus is useless except for making garlands for the 
shrines of the gods; it was the stem which was valuable. 
The Egyptians put this to all sorts of uses. They made 
boats from it and sails and cords and of course above all 
writing material. Herodotus says that the lower part 
was eaten and gives instructions for cooking it. I have 
tried it, but it proved tough and tasteless. He also says 
that it was used for making the sandals of priests. Hero- 
dotus is generally supposed to have been the first to record 
the papyrus or as he calls it the Bdfsoc. But I am not 
at all sure that Homer does not allude to it? when he says 
that Odysseus fastened the doors, when he slew the suitors, 
with ézdov BépAivov. And when we read that Moses 
as a baby was hidden in “‘ an ark of bulrushes ’’ we must 
I suppose understand an ark of papyrus. 

As for the Greeks just as they got the alphabet from 

1 As to the cultivation of the Papyrus in Europe, Strabo asserts 
that it grew on Lake Trasimeno. It certainly was cultivated in 
Sicily, where it was introduced by the Saracens, and throve at 
Palermo. But in the thirteenth century it began to disappear. 
As for these groves on the Cyane we do not hear of them before 


the end of the seventeenth century. 
2 Odyssey XXI, 390. 


96 CITIES OF SICILY 


the Phcenicians, so they got their first paper, the papyrus 
from the Egyptians; and Herodotus tells us they called 
the papyrus sheets skins, because formerly, for lack of 
papyrus, they used the skins of sheep and goats. The 
preparation seems to have been very simple. The stems 
were first pared and the pith cut lengthwise into thin 
slices which were laid side by side on a flat board. Other 
slices were laid across them at right angles, their surfaces 
being cemented together with a sort of glue. They were 
then subjected to great pressure and thoroughly dried, 
when the manufacture was complete. 

It is through the ever thickening groves of this famous 
and picturesque plant that you come at last to the source 
or fountain of Cyane. This is a large pool of marvellously 
clear water thirty feet deep—the spring of the Cyane 
stream. It is a spot of rare beauty and peace, but sur- 
rounded on all sides by an impassable and malarious marsh. 
The sanctuary or shrine of the Nymph to whom it was 
sacred must have stood on the height to the west, where 
in fact some ruins remain. 

But who was this Nymph, who had so lovely a dwelling, 
where the yellow iris grows amid green water-meadows bright 
with wild flowers, and Etna far away reigns over all ? 

According to Ovid she was the most famous of the native 
Sicilian nymphs, a playmate of Persephone. When Hades 
carried off that maid of Enna it was here, where the Nymph 
had her abode, that he plunged down to his dark kingdom. 
But Cyane stood forth in the midst of her pool as far as 
her waist and cried, ‘“‘ No farther shalt thou go! Thou 
canst not be the son-in-law of Demeter against her will. 
The maid should have been wooed not ravished. Indeed 
if it be proper for me to compare small things with great, 
I also have been wooed by Anapus, and I wedded him 
yielding to prayer not to fear.’’ So she spoke and stretch- 
ing her arms on either side barred the way. But no longer 
could the son of Saturn hold his wrath. Urging on his 
terrible steeds he whirled his royal sceptre and smote the 
pool to the bottom. The smitten earth opened up a road 
to Tartarus and received the plunging chariot in her 
cavernous depths. 





\ 
i 
3 
4 





ROUND ABOUT SYRACUSE 97 


But Cyane grieving for the rape of the goddess and for 
her fountain’s rights, thus set at naught, nursed an in- 
curable wound in her silent heart, and dissolved away in 
tears. And into those very waters was she melted whose 
great divinity she had been but now. You might see 
her limbs softening, her bones becoming flexible, her nails 
losing their hardness. Till finally in place of living blood 
clear water flowed through her weakened veins and nothing 
was left that you could touch: all had vanished into the 
cool water of a stream. 

It was the hero Herakles who, passing this way, in- 
stituted an annual festival upon the spot in honour of 
Cyane at which a bull was sunk into the fountain as a 
sacrifice. 

The story of Persephone being carried off by Hades 
is not mentioned by Homer, it is first spoken of by Hesiod. 
Zeus it is said advised Hades, who was in love with the 
beautiful child, to carry her off, as her mother Demeter 
was not likely to allow her daughter to go down to Dis. 
So the god carried her off while she was gathering flowers 
in the field of Enna, in a soft meadow there, roses and 
crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and the many 
headed narcissus which Earth made to grow to be a 
snare for the blooming girl: where to-day I am told no 
flowers grow any more. 

Ovid says that she was playing in a wood, gathering 
violets and white lilies, and while with girlish eagerness 
she was filling her basket and her bosom, almost in one 
_ act did Hades see and love and carry her away. And such 
was the innocence of her girlish years that even while 
she was being carried off it was the loss of her flowers which 
fell from her loosened tunic that even at such a time 
aroused her grief. 

Long is the story of Ovid and lovely his verse, but how 
much lovelier Milton’s : 


Not that faire field 
Of Enna, where Proserpin gathring flours 
Her self a fairer Floure by gloomie Dis 
Was gatherd, which cost Ceres all that pain 
To seek her through the world,.,.. 


98 CITIES OF SICILY 


In like manner Zeus stole away Europa with a yellow 
crocus, | 

Ah, reprehensible Gods! Cyane did well to reproach 
you. In our well policed civilization you would certainly 
meet with your deserts. Let me see. I suppose the 
Giornale dt Silicia would report it something in this fashion 


Movimentato arresto di un bruto a Siracusa 


BAMBINA VIOLENTATA DA UN 
BRUTO 


NOSTRO SERVIZIO TELEGRAFICO 


STRACUSA, 5 notte. — Un vecchio satiro 
certo Pluto fu Saturno, di Dite, banchiere, 
nonostante i suoi molti anni ha ancora idee 
bellicose in fatto di... donne. 

Il male si’6 che il vecchio superando ogni 
scrupulo morale tenta adoperare i resti della 
sua vigoria compiendo atti osceni ed insen- 
sati in danno di innocenti creature. 

Oggi infatti il malvagio satiro adocchiava 
la bambina Proserpina di Giove di anni 12 
abitante in Enna in via del Tempio la quale 
tornava da scuola insieme ad una compagna. 

Il Pluto in automobile fermava precisa- 
mente sotto il ponticello ferroviario tentava 
di afferrare la fanciulla a scopo evidente di 
sfogare su di essa le sue brutale voglie. Al 
grido di Proserpina, accorreva la bambina 
Cyane la sua compagna che assisteva alla 
trista scena.... 


It is good to linger here in the long afternoon before 
returning, floating down upon the stream; a far more 
delightful thing than rowing up. 

Then on the way home one may visit the Olympieum 
—that Temple of Olympian Zeus which stood on the height, 
on the banks of the Anapus where still two columns remain. 
This sanctuary was very famous and a small town soon 
grew up about it very much I suppose as the village of 


ROUND ABOUT SYRACUSE 99 


S. Maria degli Angeli has grown up round the Porziuncula, 
which is about as far outside Assisi as this Temple was 
from Syracuse. This small town was called Polichne or 
the Little City. Asit commanded a bridge over the Anapus 
it was always of military importance and has played its 
part in every siege of Syracuse. To-day it is only worth 
a visit for the sake of remembrance : there is really nothing 
to see. 


IT 
THE AQUEDUCT 


One of the great miseries of modern life everywhere is 
the ever-increasing difficulty of finding roads to walk in, 
where you will not be at the mercy of the motor-car. 
It used to be my greatest pleasure to go afoot all along 
the roads of Italy, but for many years now that has been 
impossible. The roads of every country to-day seem to 
belong to the wayfarer no longer: they have become the 
absolute property of the motorist. There is no longer 
any pleasure in them for the pedestrian: on the contrary 
there is acute discomfort from dust and mud, and a con- 
tinual uneasiness, which does not accord at all with the 
sentiment of him who goes afoot, and this amounts at 
times to genuine danger. To walk in the ditch or the 
gutter does not accord with the dignity of any man. 
There are of course many motor-cars upon the Syracusan 
_ roads, and the state of those roads, which are always inches 
deep in dust or else morasses of mud, full of huge potholes 
and often as stony as the bed of a torrent, makes any idea 
-of walking, as far as they are concerned, impossible. 

Happily there are many by-ways hereabout and there 
is always the wide plateau of Epipolz where only the pedes- 
trian and the mule can hope to go at all. But for the most 
part the going upon Epipole is very rough, littered as it 
is with stones, and the by-ways, as I say, are often little 
better than torrent beds. 

But in such a country, so full of beauty and delight , one 
refuses to be for ever hurled about in a motor-car, or jolted 


100 CITIES OF SICILY 


to death im vettura. Walks there must be and of course 
walks there are. 

My favourite—that which became my favourite—leads 
along the Aqueduct past the Belvedere to the foot of the 
Monti Climiti and beyond, if I liked, to Corvo near Sortino. 

Of course you can follow the Aqueduct if you like all 
the way from the Greek Theatre to Euryalus: but that 
was not my favourite walk. For the most part it means 
simply tramping along the New Road all the way to the 
Fortress: a very dull business when you have done it 
more than once. 

My walk was quite other than this. First of all I would 
drive out to Euryalus, leaving the vettura where the new 
road joins the old, on the last turn under the fortress. 
I would then as often as not send on the vettura with the 
lunch to the foot of the Monti Climiti where the by-road 
meets the road from Sortino. Then I afoot followed the 
Aqueduct all the way through the gardens and orchards 
and flowers till in an orange grove under that mountain 
headland I found the cab and the lunch and there lounged 
away the afternoon with Theocritus. A glance at the map 
will show the way I went. 

The great advantage of this walk did not lie alone in 
its entrancing beauty, but in this also, that there was a 
smooth path free from stones the whole way and the sound 
of running water accompanied you. 

The Aqueduct, now called Acquedotto Galerio, but con- 
structed certainly in antiquity and probably by Dionysius, 
can be followed all the way from the Greek Theatre where 
its waters turn a mill underground as far as the Monti 
Climiti and thence to Bottiglieria near Pantalica, some 
twenty-two chilometri from Syracuse. Its square-cut shafts 
which the few peasants find useful for dipping up their 
water, mark its course clearly, and beyond Euryalus 
where they are closer together, mark out your path for 
you, though in fact the way is clear enough. 

This then was my favourite walk—to follow the Aqueduct 
beyond Euryalus as far as the whim of the moment tempted 
me. All the way is an incredible paradise of every kind 
of wildflower, of the almond in blossom or in the scarcely 


ROUND ABOUT SYRACUSE 101 


less lovely tender green of its leaf, of apricot and plum tree 
in full flower, of dark carobs, orange groves golden with 
fruit, amid which the white blossoms shine like snowflakes 
and olives as-old as history. There is only one village 
upon the way—the village of the Belvedere with its Posto 
Semaforico on the lofty isolated hill behind it. Beyond 
there is nothing but flowers and almond groves and olive 
gardens and orchards of oranges and lemons. 

The path follows the Aqueduct meandering gently along 
the slope under the rocky plateau which stands up to the 
north and hides the sea. Often you are tempted to 
scramble over those pallid boulders and to win the crest. 
If you do, as likely as not you will come upon a large beehive 
built into the mouth of a cave with dozens of partitions 
for the honeycombs: for these are the Hyblean hills 
and the Hyblean honey was only less sweet than the Attic 
honey of Hymettus. And if you do reach the broad back 
of the ridge you will see once more all that storied coast, 
the violet sea, Mellili on its hill top, the site of Megara, 
the Xiphonian Promontory and snow-capped Etna over 
all. 

' So you arrive; and in the shade of that orange grove 
or beneath the olives beside the Aqueduct, under the Monti 
Climiti, eat what you have brought and drink the Syracusan 
wine mixed with a little water, and in the shade turn again 
to Theocritus who sings of this place also where 


“the beautiful waters pour down Thymbris vale ” 


and Thymbris vale is at your feet. 


III 7 
THE PROMONTORY OF TROGILUS 


A very different walk may be taken round the great 
headland upon which Achradina lies, where steep limestone 
cliffs thrust back the sea between the Lesser Harbour and 
the Tonnara of S. Panagia. This headland of old was 
known as the Promontory of Trogilus, to-day its most 


102 CITIES OF SICILY 


seaward cape is known as Capo di S. Panagia: that is to 
say of the all hallowed, the Blessed Virgin. 

To begin this walk I used to climb over the wall just 
outside the upper or Capuchin gate of Villa Politi and follow 
the track. It soon loses itself among the wilderness of 
stones upon the headland, but you have only to follow 
the coast or if that seems too long the railway line. 

The beauty of this walk is all a sea beauty. There is 
nothing else to recommend it. But that sea has borne 
the triremes of the Athenians, the fleets of Carthage and 
of Rome. Over it Alcibiades sailed for Thurii intent 
upon treason to Athens. From it A%schylus first saw 
Etna, and Plato the quays of Syracuse. Theocritus must 
have idled away many an hour in such a place as this where 


On the sward at the cliff top 
Lie strewn the white flocks, 


and far below shines and murmurs the Sicilian sea. 

When you are tired of such pleasures of the imagination 
there remains the Tonnava of S. Panagia—the tunny 
fishery which is interesting to visit: for such fisheries 
have been carried on from the time of the Phoenicians who 
preserved the flesh in salt, to the present day, when oil 
is preferred. This huge fish which runs to many hundred 
pounds in weight is usually caught by being driven into 
net enclosures and then harpooned: not a pleasant 
spectacle. 

Beyond the ¢onnava you can find the road inland back 
to Syracuse or continue along the coast for another mile 
and then scramble up the side of the plateau among the 
bracken and wild flowers to the look-out on the Catania 
road where it climbs Tyche. 


IV 
TO ACRA (PALAZZOLO) 


A much more tiring excursion than either of those 
pleasant walks may be made in a short day by motor- 


a 


ROUND ABOUT SYRACUSE 103 


car to Acre, or Palazzolo as it is called to-day, the great 
inland outpost and fortress of Syracuse towards the moun- 
tains, established from the first and still full of Greek 
ruins and antiquities. It lies about twenty-seven miles 
to the west of Syracuse in a pass of the Hyblean Mountains 
at a height of 2,280 feet. 

It can be reached either by way of Floridia and Solarino 
or by way of Canicattini: the latter is perhaps the lovelier 
and the better road, though the views from Solarino and 
beyond are perhaps more splendid. 

Acre itself, as a glance at the map will show us, is the 
key to the Hybleans. It is impossible to pass from the 
coast of south-eastern Sicily into the interior without pass- 
ing Acre. That is why it was so early established by 
Syracuse, some seventy years after the foundation of that 
city, in 664 B.c. according to Thucydides, and no doubt 
it played its part in keeping the pass against the Sikeli 
for many years; but its supreme justification came at 
the end of the Athenian Expedition when it prevented the 
retreat of Nikias upon his Sikelian allies, turned him back, 
and was the cause of the complete disaster to the Athenian 
forces which followed. It is, then, a notable place that 
has played its part in one of the most famous affairs in 
the history of Europe, and is well worth visiting, not 
only on that account, but for the sake of the buildings 
and other antiquities it still preserves. 

As you climb up into it to-day really on the top of the 
pass which it absolutely dominates you begin to under- 
_ stand its strength. That it was originally walled who can 
doubt since it was established if not within, then on the 
edge of, hostile territory, but no traces of walls remain. 

You climb up to the acropolis above the modern town, 
on foot, to find the only approach, this from the east, 
everywhere protected by Latomie. Here upon the top- 
most height is the exquisite little Greek Theatre which 
might have held six or seven thousand persons. It is 
wonderfully preserved, and has indeed still traces of its 
altar and is altogether one of the most charming relics 
of Greek Sicily. There are twelve semicircles of seats 
divided into seven cunei by eight flights of steps. 


104 CITIES OF SICILY 


Close by is the tiny Odeon or what is said to be the 
Odeon. It was used it is thought for music, and if so it 
must have been covered. Others have thought it to have 
been a bath; but Professor Orsi of Syracuse seems to 
favour the first conjecture, and there are certainly many 
difficulties to be faced if the latter be adopted. 

Upon the other side of the Theatre are the Latomie, 
the quarries out of which Acrz was built and which then 
became her defence. One of the walls is covered with 
carvings in the nature of ex votis. These Latomie have 
been used by the Christians of the fourth to the sixth 
century as a place of entombment. There are here too 
a series of catacombs which are similar to those in Syracuse. 
On the hill of the Theatre called by the people to-day 
Acremonte, are some very singular monuments consisting 
of figures as large as life hewn in relief in shallow niches 
in the surface of the rock. The principal figures seem to 
be those of Demeter and Persephone. 

Nor is this all. Upon what is thought to be the Via 
Sacra are the so called Templi Ferali; two large recesses 
covered with carvings and inscriptions. 

There are also in the neighbourhood both a Sikelean ) 
and a Greek necropolis, and remains of aqueducts and 
cisterns. Nor is this all, for in Palazzolo a very interest- 
ing Museum is to be seen, the Museo Judica especially 
rich in Corinthian vases of the seventh, sixth and fifth 
centuries B.C. 


V 
PANTALICA 


Syracuse is to-day the best starting point from which 
to reach what is perhaps the most astonishing spectacle 
in all Sicily: I mean the enormous cafion in the valley 
of the Anapus which is a vast Sikelian necropolis, a City 
of the Dead containing more than five thousand tombs, ~ 
more impressive even than the similar necropolis in the 
Val d’Ispica. 





ROUND ABOUT SYRACUSE 105 


Perhaps the easiest and certainly the cheapest way to 
reach Pantalica is by train not from the main station of 
Syracuse but from the small station called Siracusa Nuova 
-in Borgo S. Antonio. You go to the halt of Necropoli 
Pantalica and inform the guard at Syracuse you wish to 
alight there. But as there are only two trains in the day, 
this means getting up in time to leave Siracusa Nuova 
at 5.55 a.m. You can return from Pantalica, most con- 
veniently however, at 4.30 p.m. 

The other way is to go to Sortino Fusco or Sortino itself 
by motor-car, a distance of, say, twenty miles. It is a 
somewhat tiring walk from Sortino of an hour and a half 
to Pantalica and is much more conveniently done on 
mules. 

Whichever way you approach Pantalica, whether over 
the hills from Sortino or from the valley of the Anapus, 
it is a most impressive sight. If you come as I did from 
the valley, you enter this vast necropolis by a narrow gorge 
with sheer precipitous sides many hundreds of feet high. 
As you push on and on, up this gloomy cafion, as the gorge 
winds it opens, but remains of the same great height. And 
there cut in the sheer sides of the limestone cliffs are 
thousand upon thousand of dark windows—Sikelian tombs, 
a whole vast city of the dead. It is hard to see how the 
dead could have been conveyed by the living to such a 
place, how the bodies were ever lowered, and, not without 
ceremony, thrust into these holes for martins in the sheer 
face of the cliff. It is truly an appalling spectacle this 
- vast necropolis of the dead who lived before history begins. 
It is as though for a moment Sicily, which is all a grave- 
yard, had bared her bosom and revealed the infinite popula- 
tions of the dead, that are what we soon shall be. And if, 
as I did, you come upon this place by chance, without 
knowing what you shall see, and at evening, at the begin- 
ning of twilight, when those innumerable dark windows 
seem each to have its occupant, its watcher, you will 
find it, as I did, one of the most eerie places in the 
world. ; 


106 CITIES OF SICILY 


VI 
THE CAVA DI SPAMPANATO 


It had always been my wish, ever since I first read 
Thucydides’ marvellous account of the Athenian Expedition 
at school, to follow Nikias in his disastrous retreat to see 
the Akraion Lepas, the Acrean Rock, which halted him 
and his desperate army, as he saw it, and to understand 
in that very place the whole appalling catastrophe. So 
when I read in Bedeker that ‘‘ near Floridia is the Cava 
di Spampanato (or Culatrello) a highly romantic gorge 
through which the Athenians forced their way on their 
retreat to the Acrean Rock in 413 B.c.,’’ I made up my 
mind to march up or down the whole of this gorge and 
to see what they had seen. 

It was no easy undertaking, for no one in Syracuse that 
I could find had ever heard of the place at least by name. 
There was nothing for it but to go to Floridia. 

So I set out very early one morning by motor-car for 
Floridia. Arrived there I sought a priest and told him 
my difficulty. I could not have done better. The priests 
in my experience—the priests and the friars and monks 
—are the salt of the Mediterranean. Don Sardo knew 
at once what I wanted and directed me how to find it. 
At the same time he warned me that what I proposed to 
do I should find a very tiring business. In this too he 
was right, and I should like here to thank him. At the 
same time I think it was worth all the weariness I suffered 
and the roughness of the way. Isawthe Acrean Rock. I 
understood as even Thucydides could not show me, what 
the Athenian army must have suffered and I had the honour 
to suffer with them perhaps a thousandth part of what 
they underwent. 

But what is it Thucydides says ? 

He tells us that after their utter defeat in the Great 
Harbour the Athenians were so affected by the magnitude 
of their present ills that they did not even give a thought 
to wrecks or dead, or ask leave to take them up, but were 
planning an immediate retreat during the night. The 





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ROUND ABOUT SYRACUSE 107 


Syracusans foreseeing this and realizing that it would 
be a serious matter if so large an army retreating overland 
should settle somewhere in Sicily and be disposed to renew 
the war upon Syracuse, sent out forces to build barricades 
across the roads and frustrate the enemy by guarding the 
narrow passes. No doubt they reinforced the fortress 
of Acrz which was almost as old as Syracuse itself. Then 
they subtly assured the Athenians that this had been 
done so as to delay their departure till daylight by which 
time all would be made secure. 

So the Athenians, seeing no trickery, tarried, not for 
one day but till the third day, when with the utmost 
reluctance and in agony of spirit they abandoned their 
dead as well as their sick and their wounded, who begged 
to be taken along with them, clinging to their tent-mates 
and following as long as they were able, failing, falling 
behind with faint appeals to the gods and lamentations. 

Indeed, the Athenians looked like nothing less than a 
city in secret flight after a siege, and that no small city, 
for in the entire throng no fewer than four myriads were 
on the march together. And as they went Nikias passed 
along the ranks and endeavoured to encourage them, shout- 
ing as he came to each contingent in order to make his 
voice heard as far as possible. 

The retreat was begun in hollow square, the division 
of Nikias leading the way and that of Demosthenes 
following. They set out on the Floridia road crossing 
the Anapus some miles above the Temple of Zeus. The 
_ crossing of the river was accomplished though disputed, 
and on that first day they went forward forty stadia, 
that is about five miles, and bivouacked at a hill, close 
I suppose to Jericuno. On the next day they began the 
march early and after proceeding about twenty stadia, 
that is two and a half miles, they came down into a level 
place and encamped; for they wished to get something 
to eat from the houses which stood there, for the place 
was inhabited, and no water lay ahead of them. Thus 
I suppose they encamped in the wide vale below Floridia, 
then a village. 

On the next day, the third of the retreat, they went 


108 CITIES OF SICILY 


forward—they entered the lower part of the Cava that is 


—and the Syracusans and their allies attacked them 
and at length forced them to return to their encampment 
below: Floridia. They were now without provisions, for 
it was impossible to leave the main body to forage. 
Early next morning they set out again and forced their 
way through to the hill called the Acrzan rock where a 
wall had been built across the pass in a narrow place, 
and there the Syracusans were drawn up behind the wall 


in force. In vain they tried to storm the wall and as 


the Syracusans attempted to build another wall behind 
them they retreated to the more open part of the cava 
and bivouacked. 

On the next day, the fifth of the retreat, they advanced 
again, always with difficulty and under attack, and rested 
in the bottom; and during the night it was determined 
to abandon the attempt to force a way through the Pass. 

Then Nikias and Demosthenes caused as many camp 
fires as possible to be kindled, and when this was done 
they withdrew the army by night and in great confusion 
and fear. At dawn they reached the sea, but no longer 
as one body, for the army of Nikias was far in advance of 
the more confused body under Demosthenes. Then began 
that flight along the Helorine road which ended: in the 
surrender and destruction of both armies upon the streams 
we call Cassibile and Asinaro. 

Now to see what is said to be the very place where this 
dreadful business was enacted it is necessary to set out 
from Floridia on foot and after crossing the vale to the 
south to make one’s way up the dry torrent bed westward, 
a wilderness of stones and boulders which is the Cava di 
Spampanato. It is well to send the car on to meet you 
at Mellili on the Palazzolo road for the way up the Cava 
is infinitely tiring. Tuiring is not the proper word for such 
a scramble. The whole valley is soon filled by the torrent 
bed which is a mass of dry round stones with vast boulders 
lying here and there. These round white limestones glisten 
and shine in the sun with a really blinding effect and the 
heat is suffocating. To stumble mile after mile up this 
ever narrowing valley dry as a bone for eleven months of 





4 ; ie ante 
a i eS ae oF 


Se Pee hg ee A Pee ee ee 


i. ae 


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ROUND ABOUT SYRACUSE 109 


the year, is to suffer real misery and fatigue. But one 
does it in a small company of two or three. The imagina- 
tion boggles at what it must have been to an army of 
many thousands of men. Enclosed on every side by 
great cliffs that army was everywhere at the mercy of 
its assailants above. No order of march can have been 
properly kept, for one perforce stumbles along, one’s boots 
in ribbons, as best one can. How Nikias ever persisted 
in such a place for three days is beyond one’s compre- 
hension. 

In fact it must seem to every one who has ever attempted 
the Cava that it is most unlikely he did so. No army 
could possibly have pushed its way up the Spampanato 
without going to pieces and being trapped and utterly 
destroyed there. Some road possibly on the site of the 
present highway to Palazzolo, perhaps upon the southern 
hills, must have existed and been used by the Athenians. 
Or if indeed they used this passage then Nikias was fore- 
doomed—foredoomed by an inherent dullness and stupidity, 
which, if it were so, makes clearer his whole conduct of 
the campaign, and above all his superstitious terror, so 
amazing in an Athenian, of the eclipse and the thunder- 
storm. 


CHAPTER VIII 


ON THE WAY TO GIRGENTI: 
CALTAGIRONE AND GELA 


HE thought of the journey by train from Syracuse 
to Girgenti frightened me. Ten hours in a Sicilian 


train was more than I cared to put up with, if it 
could be avoided, and therefore I welcomed the opportunity 
which suddenly offered of going all the way by road'len 
automobile. It proved to be one of the most enjoyable rides 
I have ever had, through marvellously beautiful and most 
varied scenes, and I strongly advise any fellow-traveller 
who may happen upon this book to do as I did. But the 
road is exceedingly mountainous and the car should be a 
good one. 

I had wished to go by Noto, Ragusa and Vittoria but 
that was impossible. The road beyond Vittoria, we were 
told, had for long been impassable. It was necessary 
therefore to take the way through Palazzolo and Caltagirone 
coming down to the African Sea at Terranova, the ancient 
Gela, where A’schylus died so strangely, and so on by the 
coast through Licata to Girgenti. 

And since this road would show us something of the 
interior of Sicily we were the more reconciled to it. I 
had therefore to give up all hope of seeing what remained 
of Helorus to the south of Noto, of Motica and of Camarina 


to the south of Vittoria. I especially wished, however, 


to traverse the Helorine road as far as Noto in the wake 

of the Athenian retreat, and so it was along that road we 

set out before nine o’clock one spring morning, intend- 

ing to leave it at Noto and make our way northward to 

Palazzolo. As it happened we got no farther than Cassi- 

bile, where we stuck in the mud. The car was a heavy 
110 


ae RE te one 


ON THE WAY TO GIRGENTI 111 


Fiat saloon equal to anything and we got free of the morass 
at last; but fearing worse misfortunes on a road only 
too full of them, we gave it up and made off at once for 
the hills and came to Palazzolo at last through Canicattini. 
Palazzolo, the Greek Acre, is as I have said the key to 
the Hyblzan Mountains, it holds the high pass across them 
on this side, as Caltagirone does on the other. These 
mountains which rise to a height of well over 3,000 feet 
are the watershed between the Ionian and the African sea. 
We began to climb into their high, and, for the most 
part, bare solitudes after leaving Palazzolo. At Buscemi, 
which is 2,200 feet above the sea, we looked down upon 
the high valley of the Anapus on one side, while on the 
other we could follow its long and winding course past 
Erbesso and Pantalica to Sortino where it turned east- 
ward to Syracuse and the sea. The height just outside 
Buscemi, as you come up into it, is Monte S. Niccolo, 
where some curiously carved and decorated artificial caves 
may be seen dating from the Roman time with Byzantine 
inscriptions. And in the Cava di S. Pietro, a wild gorge 
to the north of the village, there is a curious Byzantine 
sanctuary excavated in the rock also with inscriptions. 
Still climbing all the time we swept on across the Piana 
di Buccheri without a tree or even a bush to break the 
bare sides of these solitary heights. Suddenly we came 
round a peak and there lay the brown weathered roofs 
of Buccheri below us, and towering up, far far away, 
filling the whole horizon, snow-crowned Etna shining in 
the sun; a sight to catch the breath with its beauty. 
Buccheri is a considerable mountain village of more than 
4,000 inhabitants some 2,500 feet above the sea, possibly 
the highest village in these mountains. Save the marvel- 
lous view of which I have spoken, it had nothing to offer 
us. We continued along the steep and narrow back of 
the Hybleans, descending now to their centre at Vizzini, 
view after view of the greatest beauty and strength opening 
before us, 
Vizzini, which is seven hundred feet lower than Buccheri 
and a much larger place with over 18,000 inhabitants, is 
quite without interest for travellers. We continued, still 


112 CITIES OF SICILY 


gradually descending, winding round a vast ravine, and 
now among prickly pears and vines and fruit trees, and then 
across a high and fertile plain, to Grammichele, some 1,600 
feet above the sea, a curiously built town radiating from 
a central piazza, about the same size as Vizzini. Calta- 
girone was now in sight and we soon swept up to this city 
that stands so magnificently at the gateway of the moun- 
tains. 

Caltagirone stands up on its triune hill really astride 
the pass, its waters flowing on one side into the Piana di 
Catania and the Ionian, on the other into the Campi 
Geloi and the African Sea. It stands some 1,800 feet up 
and has some 30,000 inhabitants. It is in fact a consider- 
able and a civilized place with a quite passable inn where 
one may be sure of food and good Sicilian cooking. 

I do not wish to be misunderstood. You will not find a 
Tuscan inn at Caltagirone, but they have food and do 
not insist on your supplying your own and they can cook 
an omelette. So we ordered a simple meal and waited. 

The food is everywhere—in Palermo and in Syracuse 
quite as much as in Caltagirone—one of the weaknesses © 
of Sicily. At the hotels it is monotonous and unappetizing, 
at the vistoranti and traitorie poor in quality and meagre 
in choice. The maccheroni are of course excellent, but 
most foreigners cannot live on maccheroni alone. The 
meats whatever they are called, and they are generally 
called agnellino, are invariably some sort of goat, and 
you are lucky if that goat is kid. Sicilians have told me 
that kid is delicious. It may be so: then what I have 
always had must have been goat, and goat is frankly 
beastly. It would be a good thing to exterminate all 
the goats in Sicily, in the Mediterranean, and, if you like, 
in the world. 

As for green vegetables, every hotel-keeper in Sicily 
tells you—ah, but signore, they have to come all the way 
from Venice or may be he says from Lombardy. Why? 
Here is the most fruitful corner of the earth, the home of 
Ceres, the garden of the Mediterranean and it cannot 
produce even a decent cabbage to say nothing of beans 
and peas and other delights! And it is the same with 





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ON THE WAY TO GIRGENTI 113 


the butter. The native article does not seem to exist. 
What you get is that disgusting commodity made from 
the milk of the goat. If you happen to insist upon and 
obtain real butter it is almost invariably rancid because 
it has come “‘all the way from Lombardy.”’ 

The best food Sicily produces is her cheeses. These have 
always been famous, and just as Attica was celebrated for 
its honey of Hymettus so was Sicily for her incomparable 
cheese. Fresh cheese toopadic was “‘the glory of fair 
Sicily.”” So that Aristophanes in the Peace uses it as 
emblematic of the island. And Philemon, Athenczeus tells us, 
in his play The Sicilian, says: 

I once did think that Sicily could make 

This one especial thing, good-flavoured cheese ; 
But now I’ve heard this good of it besides, 
That not only is the cheese of Sicily good, 
But all its pigeons too.... 


Euripides too in The Cyclops speaks of a cheese he calls 
éntag tugds. This seems to have been a harsh-tasting 
cheese curdled by the juice (éxdc) of the fig-tree. This, 
with what I am sure was agnellino, was all the Cyclops 
could offer Odysseus. Much the same to-day. But the 
cheeses of Sicily are still almost invariably excellent and 
there are many varieties; each district, if not each village, 
having its own. 

As for the wines, in spite of the ancient fame of the 
Mamertine and the Syracusan,? Sicilian wines to-day—I do 
not now speak of Marsala—are inferior in every way to 
those of the Continent. There is nothing in the whole 
island to equal the wines of Chianti, of the Roman Castelli, 
of Montepulciano and of Orvieto or those of Vesuvius, to 
name only the better known varieties. 

The Sicilian wines may be roughly classified into three 
kinds. The bottled species (Corvo, Casteldoccia, etc., made 
presumably for export and high-class hotel consumption 
by big landed proprietors) which are sometimes better 
than one thinks—judging by the preposterous labels— 

1 But what were the Iotaline and the Pollian wines? They 


were Sicilian. The Pollian was a sweet wine apparently the same 
as the Biblian which was a Thracian wine, or perhaps Phcenician. 


114 CITIES OF SICILY 


they are going to be. Then all the Marsala breed called 
‘bianco ’’ which infests Sicily and which whether strong 
or weak in quality, whether cheap or dear, is the filthiest 
drink imaginable and not to be touched. And then the 
common ‘“‘rosso”’ which is obtainable everywhere if 
one insists upon getting it, in a thousand varieties, some 
of which are excellent. Each place and each proprietor 
seem to have their own. It is only served from the barrel, 
and the peculiarity of Sicily is that you do not order it by 
the litre or any fixed measure, but by the size of the glass 
which you want filled with it—a number of empty glasses 
of different capacities being always ready for the customers 
of those haunts where coachman and gentleman go to 
find the only drinkable wine which can be found in Sicily. 
That is my experience at least. Not worth much! 

Now as to Marsala. The only good thing you can say 
of Marsala is that it goes well with gorgonzola. At best it 
is a poor substitute for Sherry or Madeira, without any 
real character of itsown. Ifit be dryit is fearfully acid, if 
it be sweet it is too luscious for the northern palate. It 
is a fortified wine, and was I think invented to supply 
the English demand for sherry when Nelson and the British 
Fleet were in these waters. 

Perhaps I may say here that there seems to be no truth 
whatever in the supposition that the finest Greek wines and 
especially the products of Greek Sicily and the Islands were 
of the sweet and luscious sort. The very opposite is the 
truth, as is proven by the epithets most often applied to 
them, such as advotyodc, oxAnodc, Aentos, that is rough, dry, 
thin, fine, delicate; while yAuxtdc and yduxdlor are Tarely 
used. Besides olvos 760s generally translated “‘ sweet 
wine ”’ means actually the reverse, an absence of acidity, 
as we should say a sound wine. 

No doubt the first mention of wine in the Odyssey, the 
most famous wine in the world which Odysseus was given 
by Maron the priest of Apollo upon the skirts of Thracian 
Ismarus, was a sweet wine. It was a red wine too— © 
éovdedv—and was wpediujdéa—honey sweet; it was so 
precious that it was unknown save to the priest himself, 
his wife and one house-dame; so strong that a single 


ON THE WAY TO GIRGENTI 115 


cup was mixed with twenty of water; so fragrant that 
even when thus diluted it diffused a marvellous sweet 
perfume. 

But what am I saying! This was not the most famous 
of wines. The most famous wine in the world of course 
was that which Telemachus drank after supper in Sparta, 
into which Helen, daughter of Zeus, cast a drug to quiet 
-all pain and strife and bring forgetfulness of every ill. 
Whoso should drink this down when it was mingled in the 
bowl, would not in the course of that day let a tear fall, 
no not though his mother and father should lie there dead 
nor though before his face men should slay with the sword 
his brother, or dear son, and his own eyes behold it. 

The Greeks were wiser than ourselves in this also. They 
recognized four colours in wines: black (édac), red 
(éov0pdc), amber (xéédc), and white or palest gold 
(Aevxds). And they knew that old wine is not only more 
pleasant but also better for the health than new, for it 
aids digestion more and as Athenzus points out is thinner 
and itself more digestible. The ancients, like the modern 
French and Italians, seldom drank unmixed wine, wine 
that is unmixed with water. Indeed Herodotus in his 
sixth book says that Cleomenes, King of Sparta, having 
lived among the barbarous Scythians got the habit of 
drinking unmixed wine and thereby became perfectly 
ae 

Homer also speaks of a wine he calls aidoy, which 
means sparkling; but whether sparkling in colour or in 
the sense of effervescence I do not know: the former I 
imagine—from its resemblance to the colour of fire which 
Sicilian vosso has, a kind of glowing colour. 

But I was getting devilish hungry! Our host of the 
Albergo Trinacria seemed to be a singularly long time 
preparing our eggs and trimming that Sicilian goat which 
was to be the piéce de résistance. Oh for a place at one of 
those old Syracusan feasts against which Plato warns his 
correspondent! Ah, those Syracusan tables, that old 
Sicilian variety of dishes! . 

Caltagirone is the Faenza of Sicily they say. At any 
rate it is famous for its majolica. There seems to have 


116 CITIES OF SICILY 


been a Sikelian town here in antiquity and even in pre- 
historic times, so at least the excavations at Montagna, a ~ 
mile or two to the north-west of the town, suggest, and 
perhaps a Greek outpost or at any rate what seems more ~ 
likely, Greek influence as long ago as the sixth century B.c. 
And yet why more likely ? Caltagirone stands in relation 
to the Greek city of Gela on the south coast exactly as 
Acre stands to Syracuse. There may well have been a 
Greek fortress here at this end of the pass as there was at 
Acre at the other. Only its name escapes us, for Cal- 
tagirone is Saracen Kalaigerun, they say, the fortress 
cave, but nothing seems to be known of the Saracen or 
Byzantine town. But as excavation has proved both in ~ 
antiquity and in Saracen times also, Caltagirone was a seat 
of the pottery craft and thus endured right through the 
ages and continues to-day. The modern industry owes 
everything to Gesualdo di Bartolo, and in Casa Bartolo 
in Via Stovigliai there is a fine collection of Caltagirone 
ware. 3 

Not much is to be seen in the town which was largely 
destroyed in the earthquake of 1693. The great flight of 
steps up out of the Piazza leads to the old ruined Castle. 
The town has a few houses of the seventeenth century, 


worth seeing perhaps, such as the Casino dei Nobili and j 


the church of S. Giacomo, a rebuilding of an older church 
after the earthquake of 1693, in which in the transept on ~ 
the gospel side is a fine doorway by one of the Gagini, the © 
Sicilian sculptors, dated 1585. The museum in the Via 
degli Studi is worth a visit for its prehistoric pottery and 
local majolica. 

But we could not spend long in Caltagirone, if we were 
to reach Girgenti that night, for we were not yet half-way 
there, and it was already afternoon. 

So we set out, and almost at once began to descend 
rapidly southward towards the coast, down the valley of 
the Maraglio, the ancient Gela ; and as the valley opened 
wide we came into those Campi Geloi of which both Dio- 
dorus and Virgil speak, and which are still as in antiquity 
among the most fertile corn-growing districts in Sicily. 
Indeed they gave Gela her epithet of avugépyogos, the wheat- 


\ 





ON THE WAY TO GIRGENTI 117 


bearing. Soon Gela itself rose up before us on its long hill 
that hid the sea. 

Terranova, Gela that was, is a large town of 23,000 
inhabitants. It was founded in 690 B.c., forty-four years 
after Syracuse, by a joint colony of Cretans and Rhodians, 
and was one of the most important Greek cities in Sicily. 
Thucydides says the place got its name from the river 
Gela, but the place where the acropolis then was, which 
was the first to be fortified, was called Lindi, evidently 
after Lindus in Rhodes. The institutions given to it were 
Dorian and just one hundred and eight years after its 
foundation the Geloans founded Acragas (Girgenti) nam- 
ing it too after the river upon which it stood. The new 
colony is a proof in itself of the flourishing condition of 
Gela. In the beginning of the fifth century B.c. Hippo- 
crates was Tyrant of Gela and raised it to the pinnacle of 
its power, reducing Leontinoi, Callipolis and far Naxos 
to servitude and even taking Zankle (Messina). Gelon 
succeeded him and made himself master of Syracuse in 
485 B.c. This was the beginning of the decline of Gela, 
for Gelon, preferring Syracuse, not only established him- 
self there, but compelled half the inhabitants of Gela to 
migrate there also. After some years of oppression the 
city recovered, and after 466 B.c. was able to found a new 
colony at Camarina, which Gelon had desolated. The city 
now seems to have prospered until it was laid waste by the 
Carthaginians in 405 B.C. 

That period of prosperity after 466 B.c. is particularly 
remarkable in Gela for the fact that it was then she received 
the greatest of her guests, the poet A‘schylus, who in 
457 B.C. was exiled from Athens. The great Athenian, it 
seems, had in his last play the Ewmenides shown himself 
to be a supporter of the old order against the democratic 
policy of Pericles. He was an old man and opposed to the 
younger generation among whom he was a stranger. In 
disgust perhaps, certainly in fear, he left Athens and came 
once more to Sicily. The Athenian rabble irresponsible 
and vicious even went so far we are told as to accuse the 
great tragedian of impiety, and would have condemned 
him, as they were later, when the fruits of democracy 

g 


118 CITIES OF SICILY 


proved bitter, to condemn Socrates. The old man left 
Athens and sought the hospitality of Gela, where a year 
later in 456 B.c. he died, most mysteriously as it happened. 
For it is said that an eagle mistaking the poet’s bald head 
for a stone let fall upon it a tortoise to break the shell, 
and so fulfilled an oracle according to which Aéschylus was 
fated to die by a blow from heaven. Whether this really 
happened—there are other instances of similar things—or 
whether it is an allegory we shall never know. 

At any rate his last days were spent in peace and in 
honour. The people of Gela showed their regard for his 
genius and his character by public solemnities in his honour 
and by erecting a noble monument to him and inscribing 
it with an epitaph which he himself had written. In 
it Gela is mentioned as the place of his burial, and the 
field of Marathon as the place of his most glorious achieve- 
ments: no mention at all is made therein of his poetry. 


The grove of Marathon and the long-haired Medes 
Who felt his valour well may speak of tt « 


It is needless to say that nothing of this monument re- 
mains in Gela to-day. But there are ruins of ancient Gela. 
On a hill to the east of the modern town are parts of the 
stylobate, and a prostrate column, of a Doric Temple of the 
fifth century B.c. Close by in 1906 was excavated the 
stylobate of an older temple very finely decorated in painted 
terra-cotta, and on the western side of the present town 
at the end of the Corso upon Capo Soprano were the great 
necropolt of the Greek city the spoil of which is now in the 
Museum of Syracuse. 

We left Gela with regret. Had there been a passable 
hostelry there we should have stayed for the night. The 
coast is fine and the country delicious. As it was we were 
compelled to push on in the golden sunset over the sea 
through Licata and Palma to Girgenti. 

It was already moonlight when the majestic line of 
Temples came in sight and we turned up the hill behind 
them to the city. 


CHAPTER IX 
GIRGENTI 


world than the spectacle which lies before one from 

the hills of Girgenti, and especially from the 
terraces and gardens of the Hotel des Temples. Behind 
you rise two lofty and precipitous heights, whence the 
land subsides, sloping gradually seaward in a series of 
waves. From one of these, the first and the highest, you 
look down over a sea of almond blossom to the long line 
of Temples which stand along the last, behind them the 
sea. 

For its suggestion, as it were, of resurrection, the vision 
it seems to offer you of the remote and beautiful past, of a 
life wholly different, and, in your first material glimpse of it, 
thus magically spread before you, certainly lovelier than 
anything we have known, that view is unique, not only in 
Sicily but inthe world. You seem suddenly to have found, 
still tangible and living upon earth, that old and beloved 
Greek world which till now has been but a dream rising from 
the pages of a book, the words of a poet, the description 
of an historian, the thoughts of a philosopher. There it 
stands, the golden sun upon it, waves of blossoming almond 
beating against it, and, shining through its colonnades, the 
violet sea. Here suddenly between two heart beats you 
realize you have come home. 

Yes, on that first morning in the southern sunshine, that 
line of Temples, so perfect, that to the seeing eye, they still 
seem complete, really unbroken and unspoiled, one realizes 
what an unredeemed mistake everything has been since 
they were built: the barbarism of what destroyed them, 
the futility of the dreams which were not satisfied with them, 

119 


TT ore can be few more wonderful sights left in the 


120 CITIES OF SICILY 


the baseness and the folly of the desertion; Carthage, 
Rome, the Middle Age, the modern world, what are they 
all but disaster piled on disaster beside the world which 
these expressed. There dwelt reason, temperance, equani- 
mity ; for a moment, if only for a moment, visibly present 
with one again, on first beholding, rebeholding rather— 
the now well remembered, unforgettable city of our youth 
—our childhood and our home. 

There was a world, then, in which perfection existed ; 
it was that world. 7 

It is gone. We shall not see it again. Save on some 
fortunate day, in some privileged hour, upon a rare and 
halcyon morning, or, as here, beside these half abandoned 
ruins, we shall not even divine perhaps that it ever was 
ours. Like our childhood it lies behind us, it has vanished 
away; only, like that childhood, it has left behind it, at 
least to the acceptable soul, something that is half a memory, 
half an intuition, of its genius, its harmony, its spirit here 
made manifest, which shall not wholly die, shall not alto- 
gether vanish. And yet.... 

Those Temples which in their so reasonable beauty, their 
harmony, enchantment and completeness fill the mind of 
the traveller who sees them for the first time with an 
almost overwhelming sense of nostalgia, stand as I have 
said on a long hill precipitous over the sea as it seems, 
though in fact some two or three miles from it. Above 
them landward and almost as far off tower up the isolated 
and almost unapproachable heights of the acropolis and 
of the Rupe Atenea, upon the first of which the modern 
city is built, a climbing mass of houses crowned by the 
Cathedral, medieval still, like the city itself, in spite of 
modern restoration. | 

From the foot of these two towering heights the land 
slopes away in a restless series of low clay hills, cut by the 
deep winding gorges of the two small rivers of the place the 
Acragas and the Hypsas, and now a sea of almond blossom, 
to the long hill upon which the Temples stand, its steep 
escarpment falling precipitously to the wide sea plain 
between Punta Bianca and Porto Empedocle, the modern 
harbour of Girgenti. 


ee ep ee eS ee ee ee a ee ee eo eee 


a eee ee 


GIRGENTI 121 


The great natural strength of the place—for both the 
heights of the Acropolis and the Rupe Atenea were pre- 
cipitous and only approachable the one upon the east 
and other upon the west, while the hill of the temples 
formed a natural fortification to the south—no doubt 
recommended it and, as maystill be seen, was improved by 
surrounding walls some six miles about, large parts of 
which still remain, especially upon the southern front. 
If Pindar called it ‘‘ the fairest of mortal cities,’’ and it 
may well have been so, it was certainly one of the strongest, 
while the magnificence of its public and private buildings 
is attested by what we see and by the remark of Empe- 
docles, who said of the Agrigentines that they lived so 
luxuriously you might think they expected to die to- 
morrow, but they built as though they would live for 
ever. 


II 


We learn from Thucydides that Acragas was founded by 
a colony from Gela about one hundred and eight years 
after the establishment of that city, that is to say about 
581 B.c. Andthey named the city after the River Acragas, 
making Aristonous and Pystilus founders, and giving it 
the institutions of the Geloans which were Dorian. It 
seems almost immediately to have fallen into the hands 
of a tyrant, the mysterious Phalaris, who made it one of the 
most powerful cities in Sicily and extended his rule over 
a considerable part of the island. The cruelty of his 
administration, however, became proverbial. A certain 
Perillus constructed for him a brazen bull, in which he is 
said to have burnt his victims alive, Perillus himself being 
the subject of his first experiment. This fact or fable 
seems to point to a strong Phcenician influence and to a 
cult of Moloch of which we have perhaps other traces in 
Girgenti in the Temple of the Giants, the Temple of Jupiter 
Atabyrius, of Tabor that is, and perhaps in the Temple of 
Jupiter Polieus, of Melkarth, upon the Acropolis. As the 
whole wealth of Girgenti must have been due to her trade 


122 CITIES OF SICILY 


with Carthage, to whom she sold her agricultural produce, 
this is not surprising. The two cities faced one another 
across the African sea and were not much more than 150 
miles apart. Phalaris perished in a general insurrection 
in 564 B.C. 

We know nothing further of Acragas till Theron became 
tyrant, probably in 488 B.c. Theron belonged to one of 
the most illustrious families in the city. His ancestors 
had come to Gela with the founders of that city from 
Rhodes, and his great grandfather had led the revolution 
which overthrew Phalaris. He expelled from Himera 
Terillus, tyrant of the city, who immediately appealed for 
help to the Carthaginians, This was probably in 482 B.c. 
Theron thus ruled over two among the more powerful 
cities in Sicily and at the same time was in close alliance 
with Gelon of Syracuse and Gela, who had married his 
daughter Demarete. Together these two allies faced the 
Carthaginians when under Hamilcar they landed at Himera 
to restore Terillus. Theron occupied Himera but was 
besieged there and sent to Gelon for aid. Gelon marched 
to his relief and the famous Battle of Himera was fought, 
it is said upon the same day in 480 B.c. as the Battle of 
Salamis, the Carthaginians being utterly defeated. So 
large a number of prisoners was taken and employed as 
slaves, that both Syracuse and Acragas, but especially 
the latter, were rebuilt by their labour. The territory of 
Acragas was increasingly brought under cultivation and its 
wealth in consequence very largely multiplied. Certainly 
the city enjoyed great prosperity under the rule of Theron. 
The most splendid buildings, among them those we see, 
were then erected, public works, reservoirs and aqueducts 
were established on a stupendous scale and the city was 
victoriously represented at the Olympic games, Among 
the poets who frequented Theron’s court, the splendour of 
which rivalled that of Gelon at Syracuse, was Pindar, 
who wrote his second and third Olympian Odes in his 
honour. 

Theron died in 472 B.c. A magnificent monument was 
erected in his name, at which heroic honours were paid 
to his memory. He was succeeded in the tyranny by his 


ILNHDAID «, SATION GNV YOLSVO,, 40 BIdWNaL 





er ee eee Oe 
ay ¢ ev 
rey 

. 





GIRGENTI 123 


son Thrasydzus, who by his violence and misrule quickly 
alienated his subjects and was expelled within a year of his 
father’s death. 

Acragas now established a democratic government, which 
endured for more than sixty years, indeed till the Car- 
thaginian invasion of 406 B.c. This was the most pros- 
perous period the city was ever to enjoy. The revolution 
which overthrew Thrasydeus had been enthusiastically 
supported by a citizen who was to come to the greatest 
eminence—Empedocles, son of Meton. His zeal in inspir- 
ing the establishment of political equality, his magnanimous 
sympathy with the poor, his severity towards the over- 
bearing among the rich, his brilliant oratory, his quite 
amazing knowledge of the laws of nature, his genius and the 
reputation of his marvellous powers, which he had acquired 
by curing diseases and by his successful attempts to drain 
marshy districts to avert epidemics and to divert obnoxious 
winds, gave such lustre to his name that he was not only 
offered the sovereignty, which he refused, but was by 
many regarded as a supernatural being. Diogenes Lertius 
repeats all sorts of stories about his half miraculous powers, 
which caused him to be regarded as a diviner. Empedocles 
himself thus addresses the people of Acragas : ‘‘ My friends 
who dwellin the great city sloping down to yellow Acragas, 
hard by the acropolis, busied with goodly works—AII hail ! 
I go about among you an immortal god, no more a mortal, 
so honoured of all, as is meet, crowned with fillets and 
with garlands of flowers. As soon as I enter with my 
followers into the towns I am reverenced, and tens of 
thousands follow me to learn where is the path that leads 
to welfare; some desirous of oracles, others suffering 
from all kinds of diseases desirous of hearing a message of 
healing.” 

Philosopher, savant, engineer, musician, physician, pro- 
phet, miracle worker, Empedocles yet found time to be a 
democratic leader, to give a constitution to the republic, to 
establish civil equality and to abolish the aristocratic privi- 
leges of his time. We know so little of him that it is only 
dimly we may really grasp what was his real achievement 
in learning and in science. But the authentic fragments 


124 CITIES OF SICILY 


of his writings which have come down to us show him often 
to be approaching the solutions of the problems of nature 


which, two thousand years later, Newton, Darwin and — 4 


Hegel have perhaps unravelled. He made some experi- 
ments with the water clock, recognized the weight of the 
air, and certainly seems to have had some idea of the 
chemical atom, knew something of latent heat and of the 
idea of attraction. He seems even to have guessed the 
natural selection of animal species and the position of the 
sun in relation to the earth and the other planets. In 
botany he was not less clairvoyant, for he seems to have 
had some notions about the sex of plants. 

But the savant in him was doubled with the statesman, 
and it might almost seem with the wonder worker, the 
charlatan. He appeared in the streets grave and melan- 
choly in a purple robe with sandals of bronze, a crown of 
gold or of flowers on his head in the midst of a crowd of 
young disciples who acclaimed him. He seems only feebly 
to have denied that he worked miracles, even that he had 
raised the dead, and he scarcely repulsed those who wor- 
shipped him as a god. Was it in disgust of all this of 
the folly of his friends, the misery of the multitude, the 
stupidity of men, in disgust at last of himself, who must, 
minister to them, that he disappeared, vanished away 
so that no man saw him depart or knew whither he had 
gone ? Some—not his friends—declared that fearing 
death to be at hand, when it would be evident he was but 
as any other man, he had left the feast before daybreak 
and ascended the cone of Etna, and leapt into the crater 
as into a secure hiding place. And they asserted that 
they had found one of his bronze sandals cast forth by the 
volcano. Such was the story. It may beso. But others 
say he slipped into the sea and was drowned, others assert 
that he went to Peloponnesus where he died, and others 
again that he died and was buried at Megara where his tomb 
might be seen. 

However this may be there can be no doubt of the benefits 


he conferred upon his native city and indeed upon Sicily. 7 


He drained the marshes of Selinus and saved the people 
there from extinction by malaria, He is said to have cleft 





GIRGENTI 125 


the hill of the acropolis at Acragas so as to let in the north 
wind for refreshment. Certainly from his abundant means 
he bestowed dowries upon many maidens of the city who 
had no dowry. 

Diodorus tells us that at this time the number of citizens 
in Acragas was not less than 20,000 and he estimates the 
whole population, including the slaves, at not less than 
200,000. The luxury, wealth and beauty of the city were 
famous. Following the example of Gellias, the richest 
among the citizens, open hospitality was offered to all who 

came to Acragas; and Antisthenes, when he married his 
daughter, feasted whole populations not only of Acragas 
but of the neighbouring cities, in the streets. And Acragas 
was able to remain entirely neutral in the quarrel of 
Syracuse and Athens. She refused aid of any sort to both 
combatants. 

But this happy and excellent state of affairs was not to 
endure. A most formidable danger was at hand. The 
Carthaginians whom the Segestans had called to their aid 
against Selinus, in the first expedition, in 409 B.C., were 
content with the sack of Selinus and Himera. But in 
406 B.c. they returned, and it was Acragas that was des- 
tined to be their victim. The beautiful city was unpre- 
pared for such an onslaught. It armed itself in haste, 
employed a Spartan general, and chiefly owing to the 
natural strength of the city and the aid of a Syracusan 
army was able to hold out for eight months before famine 
reduced it to such distress that, to avoid surrendering, the 
whole population abandoned the city and migrated by 
night to Gela. At dawn the Carthaginians entered, mas- 
sacred the sick and helpless who could not escape, and not 
only plundered, but destroyed, the city itself. The Tem- 
ples were overthrown and their columns hewn down by 
the barbarian. That their work of destruction was never 
completed was due to Dionysius, who having made him- 
self tyrant of Syracuse in 405 B.c. presently secured peace, 
and the Carthaginians quitted Acragas in the spring of 
that year. 

Acragas never recovered from this fatal blow. Under 
the terms of the treaty which Dionysius made her citizens 


126. CITIES OF SICILY 


were permitted to return to the ruined city but were — 
subjected to Carthaginian rule. They returned, and a 


few years later, after the victories of Dionysius, were 
able to shake off the yoke of Carthage, when the River — 


Halycus which flowed by the ancient Heralcea Minoa and 


to-day passes under Cattolica Eraclea, was established as a 


the Carthaginian boundary, nothing east of it being within 4 
their administration. Nevertheless, Acragas remained 


broken till Timoleon, in the general settlement of Sicilian 
affairs, after his great victory over the Carthaginians upon 
the Crimissus in 340 B.c., re-established the city with — 


colonists from Velia on the continent, when it again pros- a 
pered: but it was not the old Acragas, and a generation 


later it came within the hegemony of Syracuse. Its 4 


independent career was over and it never again played 
any considerable part in the affairs of Sicily save indeed 
on one occasion when during the First Punic War it forgot 
all its traditions and sided with Carthage against Rome. 
Rome besieged it and took it after a seven months’ siege. 
During the Second Punic War it remained faithful to Rome, 
but was taken by storm by the Carthaginians, whomadeit 
their headquarters in Sicily. But it was betrayed by the 
Numidian soldiers of Hanno to the Roman general, and 
at the end of the war became with the rest of the Sicilian 
cities permanently subject to the new mistress of the 
world. 


III 


I suppose every one, as I did, begins his exploration of © 


Girgenti, of the old Greek city of Acragas, by a visit to those — 4 


five Temples along the southern height, which stood only 
just within the ancient walls towards the sea. Yet these, 
old as they are, are by no means the oldest Temples of 
Acragas, Those were the Temples of Zeus Atabyrius, of 
Athena and of Zeus Polieus, which stood upon the acro- 
polis of the ancient city. This acropolis would seem to 
have been the rock known as the Rupe Atenea, upon the 
top of which it is thought the double sanctuary of Zeus 





GIRGENTI 127 


Atabyrius and Athena stood. The Temple of Zeus Polieus 
is generally supposed to have occupied the summit of the 
other height where the Cathedral stands to-day above 
the modern city. And the Temple discovered beneath 
S. Maria dei Greci, also within the modern city, is said to 
be that of Aphrodite. Far more celebrated than any of 
these was the Temple of Olympian Zeus and that stood 
upon the southern hill just within the walls towards the 
sea. 

To reach these ruins I wandered down through the 
delicious garden of the Hotel des Temples and on through 
the groves of almonds and carobs beyond, coming out 
just above S. Nicola on the dusty highway which I fol- 
lowed to the iron gate of the Temple. A small boy, sent 
by the custode, who was busy elsewhere, let me in, and I 
presently stood by the prostrate giant and looked upon 
the hugest ruins I had ever seen. 

Those great Doric capitals hurled down by the Car- 

thaginian or the earthquake, those vast drums of the 
broken columns—how were they ever upraised? They 
seemed too huge for mortal strength. Why, in the fluting, 
the scanalatura of one of the columns I could stand, but 
easily, with space to spare. I know nothing save the 
' similar Temple, the similar mass of ruins at Selinunte, 
which so surprises one; besides these columns those of 
5. Peter’s seem insignificant. Is it only because these 
are overthrown ? 
_ The child climbed over the vast débris encouraging me 
to follow him; but I sat down there among the flowers, 
for the flowers have run among these precious stones, 
caressing them with their beauty ; and sometimes looking 
over the almond blossom up to Girgenti, sometimes look- 
ing over the sea-plain to the sea, I began toread Diodorus, 
who has much to say of this Temple. For, in Girgenti 
there is time for everything even for so antique an historian 
as Sicilian Diodorus. 

He begins by describing the riches of this countryside 
which I had only to lift my eyes from his page to see: 
the wide, deep vineyards richer and more beautiful here, 
he says, ‘than anywhere else ; the whole territory planted 


128 CITIES OF SICILY 


with olives, the fruits of which were exported and sold 4 
to Carthage, for Libya was not yet cultivated. So like — 
the Carthaginians that! Those inveterate traders and © 


merchants thought little of agriculture; and so the city “a 
of Acragas sold them its fruits, and received money in 
exchange for the produce of its earth and its labour, thus _ 


amassing immense riches, which were nobly spent, as we 


see. Their monuments, says Diodorus, are a proof of this 


their wealth. 

Those sacred buildings and above all the Temple of Zeus 
bear witness to the opulent splendour which the people 
of Acragas enjoyed. But all the other Temples have been 
burned and destroyed by their enemies, who have more ~ 
than once seized the city. War in fact prevented this 
Temple of Olympian Zeus from being finished, for it was 
never roofed, and since the town was sacked the citizens 
had no longer the means to complete it, but it escaped 
destruction. The Temple was a vast pseudo-peripteros 
with thirty-eight huge engaged columns. It was 372 


feet long by 182 feet broad; its cella measured 302 feet _ 
by 68; its columns were 55 feet high and not less than 
14 feet 9 inches in diameter. Diodorus asserts that it was 


the largest temple in Sicily. It was as a matter of fact 
not only the largest in Sicily, larger in every way than the 
huge Temple G at Selinunte, but one of the largest in the 
world.! It was, Diodorus says, not built in the usual style 
of a Greek temple with a cella of massive walls and a peri- 
style, but was designed in a mixed style with half columns 
as pilasters rounded without, but within showing a flat 
surface. The porticoes were vast and ofa prodigious height. 
Above the eastern face of the Temple was represented the 
Combat of the Giants, a work of sculpture remarkable for _ 
its beauty and its dimensions. Upon the western face was — 


1 The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was larger. It was 425 feet 
long, 220 feet broad. The columns, which numbered 128, were 
60 feet high. This was the largest of Greek Temples. The area 
of the Parthenon is about one-third that of this Temple: the Par- 
thenon being 228 by 100 feet. The Olympieum at Athens is 353% 
feet long by 134% feet broad. The columns were 56% feet high but 
only 5-54 feet in diameter. Really only the Temple of Artemis at 
Ephesus was larger than this Temple of Zeus at Acragas. . 





GIRGENTI 129 


shown the Fall of Troy, in which one saw each of the heroes 
who there played a part. 

Of all this what remains ? Nothing but a huge heap of 
ruins and a single colossal figure lying upon its back about 
which the flowers blow, among them Theocritus’ creeping 
éliyovoos. Presumably this colossal Telamon with 37 of 
its fellows supported the entablature, or possibly two such 
figures stood on either side the great entrance.} 

Climbing about, up and down over these enormous frag- 
ments, after. I had wondered enough at the mere size of the 
capitals and columns and details, ail carved in that golden 
stone, I began to be oppressed by the imperfection of 
everything, the roughness and the crudeness of the details, 
of the carved work everywhere. This to some extent 
was no doubt due to the weathering of the stone after 
more than two thousand years. But in some measure it 
was inherent. For these Temples of Sicily were not 
built of marble, but of stone. They were never meant 
to be seen naked as they now lie. When they stood 
beautiful above the sea, in Syracuse, in Acragas, in Selinus, 
their golden stone was covered by the finest stucco, the 
colour of pentelic marble and painted in places with bright 
colours gay and lovely in the sun. This stucco, almost as 
hard and smooth as marble, remains in many of the flutings 
of the columns here. 

Before the eastern front of the Temple are some remains 
of a vast altar of sacrifices. 

_ My little guide now led me across the fodere to a group 
of columns standing upright which he called the Temple of 
Castor and Pollux. In fact these columns are a fanciful 
re-erection, the absurd but most effective corner of a 
temple, set up from the remains of two different temples 
by Cavallari. However, the four Doric columns are of 
great beauty and the whole is very picturesque. 

Close by the Temple of Olympian Zeus on the other side 
of the Porta Aurea stands what remains or has been re- 
erected of the Temple of Herakles, a line of golden columns 
against the sea. This was a temple also of the Doric order 


1 The two giants upon the coins of Acragas suggest or seem to 
suggest this. 


130 CITIES OF SICILY 


but peripteral-hexastyle, surrounded that is by a portico 
consisting of six columns in front and fifteen on each 
side. It was the largest of the temples which remain to us 
in Acragas after the Temple of Olympian Zeus. It con- 
tained a famous painting by Zeuxis of Alcmene and a 
statue of Herakles which Verres tried to steal by night. 
Until a few years ago only one column of this temple 
was still standing, but in recent years, largely owing to the 
initiative and at the expense of an Englishman, Colonel 
Hardcastle, eight columns have been erected, four of them 
crowned with their.great Doric capitals. I could have 
wished them undisturbed. 

I now made my way, always accompanied by my little 
guide, to the so-called Temple of Concord on the ridge 
to the east. This is the best preserved of all the Temples 
at Girgenti, and even of Sicily, for the Temple at Segesta 
is but half finished. In its golden beauty it stands up in 
the sun, really, from many points of view, complete and 
unspoiled. It dates from the fifth century and its title of 
‘Concordia ”’ is, if it has any authenticity at all, merely 
of Roman date. Its preservation is said to be due to the 
fact that in the Middle Age it became a Christian church 
under the invocation of S. Gregorio delle Rape. But 
how can that be? It suggests that all this destruction and 
overthrow was the work not of the Carthaginians nor of 
the earthquake, but of the Christians. It is true that the 
Temple of Olympian Zeus, was, till the beginning of the 
fifteenth century, still largely complete, though over-— 
thrown, and that it was then in part removed for building 
purposes and more lately for the construction of Porto 
Empedocle. ; 

No; it may be that the enormous labour ne destruction 
begun by the Carthaginians upon these temples in Acragas 
tired them out; it may be they were interrupted by 
Dionysius before they were able to demolish more than the 
three or four temples in the west. But what the Chris- 
tians had to do with it all remains obscure, and considering 
their record and our own in such matters, remembering as 
one cannot but do the rape of the Parthenon, one is loathe 
to credit them or ourselves with any tenderness for such 





c I 


TEMPLE OF “ CONCORD,’ GIRGENTI 





THE THEATRE AT ACR& 





GIRGENTI 131 


buildings as these, in the service of paganism, and, as far 
as we are concerned, offering such wonderful opportunity 
for loot. 

The beautiful Temple ‘‘ of Concord,’’ is what is called 
peripteros-hexastylos, that is to say with columns at each 
end and along each side, having six columns in the porti- 
coesat eitherend. Allthese columns, thirty-four in number, 
are still standing, as are the pediments and architraves. 
The cella, which was reached by steps, had a pronaos, that 
is to say a chamber before it, enclosed by the eastern 
portico and an opisthodomus in antis, that is to say another 
chamber behind the cella enclosed by the western portico. 
The roof has fallen. For its admirable preservation and 
its completeness, as well as for its touching majesty and 
grace this Temple remains one of the most beautiful 
Greek monuments in the world. To-day it stands there, 
an exquisite casket of golden stone, but you may still 
trace upon it the remains of the painted stucco which once 
covered it, so that it stood up over the sea in far off days 
like a work in pentelic marble decorated in colour and in 
gold. 7 

I wandered away at last to examine the last of this line of 
Temples, that of ‘‘ Hera Lacinia,” little more than a line of 
Doric columns upon the highest part of the ridge. The 
dedication of this temple seems again to be merely the 
guess of ignorance, which has confused it with that most 
famous sanctuary which stood in honour of Hera upon 
the Lacinian Promontory on the coast of Calabria, where 
still a single Doric column stands over the Ionian sea, We 
shall never know in whose honour any of these temples 
were built, save that of Olympian Zeus. 

This Temple called of Hera stood in the north-east 
angle of the city by the wall above the River Acragas. 
It was of the same style as, but a little smaller than, the 
Temple of “Concord,” and the cella was in antis. It 
seems to date from the beginning of the fifth century B.c. 
and to be somewhat earlier than the Temple of ‘* Concord.”’ 
It would appear to have been overthrown by earthquake 
and not by the Carthaginians. Twenty-five of its columns 
remain, all those of the north side being erect with their 


| 
, 
i 
iy 
a 


architrave still in place. Nine other columns are partly © 
erect, but the cella, the porticoes, and the roof are wholly — 
overthrown. 

It was now near midday and my little guide led me back 
towards San Nicola where in the delicious convent garden ~ 
under the stone pine and the cypress I might eat in the — 
shade the Sicilian cheese and the figs I had brought along — 
with me. From that shade, from that silence where the 
only sound was the hum of the bees among the flowers, I — 
looked back across the almond blossom over the tender ~ 
green of the young wheat to that line of golden Temples ~ 
dark against the sky, through whose columns shone the © 
sea; not set in exact line along that ridge carefully of the — 
same height as we might have purposed to do, but in ~ 
harmonious irregularity, a disorder so perfect that in itself — 
it sang like an air in the Dorian mode, liké a line of a motet 
by Palestrina, as subtle in its beauty, as complete in its — 
perfection, as moving, to me at any rate, in its pathos. — 
That men could have been found, that men could have ~ 
had the heart, to destroy things so fair. Yes, one might 
well ask of oneself such a question until one remembered ~ 
what men daily do to things as fair as these. ... 

That garden of San Nicola is a paradise; one might — 
lounge there many an afternoon reading upon the platform — 
of the piscina or wandering through the alleyways out — 
into the podeve and the vineyards and back again. Indeed 
it is hard to tell where garden ends and podere begins. 

And there is much to be had beside the pleasure of 
the place itself: the view of the Temples thence, the view — 
of the city, piled up house over house upon the hill under ~ 
the Duomo, the view over the vineyards and the almond ~ 
blossom to the hill they call the Hippodrome. And close 
by is the so-called Oratory of Phalaris—a strange name— 
connoting I know not what—attached to a Roman building © 
of the second century B.c. 

And last, but infinitely well worth seeing for all that, — 
is the ancient church, now under the invocation of S. Nicola. — 
Gothic the guide-books call it: but it is surely the cella of © 
a Greek temple. The solemn facade, as golden as the ~ 
temples, with its deep portal and heavy cornice, may 





182 CITIES OF SICILY 


GIRGENTI 133 


technically be “‘ Gothic,’’ but it has nothing of the Gothie 
soul: it remains Greek and belongs to those Ionian and 
#éigean isles where you might expect a little provincialism 
to inform your art, to be as it were a country roughness 
ina tongue that wasitselfa dialect. Within, the impression 
is even more direct: this is the cella of a Greek temple; 
to-day it is the sanctuary of a Christian church. Some- 
thing similar may be seen in the church of S. Biagio under 
the Rupe Atenea. 

Close by San Nicola on the other side of the road they 
have found the remains of an ancient house with mosaics, 
which is called the Casa Greca. It may beso: but it seems 
to me indisputably Roman. 

In the cool of the afternoon I went down once more to the 
Temples, and passing out of the Porta Aurea, still clearly 
indicated on either side the road, I came into the sea-plain 
and turning, saw the long stretched débris of the ancient 
walls over the precipitous escarpment and the Christian 
tombs cut therein, tombs probably of the second century, 
to which time the catacombs called the Grotta de’ Franga- 
pani hereabout belong. 

My little guide had not deserted me and presently led me 
off this road, which leads at last to the ancient Greek 
harbour at the mouth of the Acragas, and crossing a 
field brought me to the building known as the Tomb of 
Theron. Alas, this too is a Roman work and in no wise 
like the Tomb of Theron as Diodorus describes it—a 
monument of an immense grandeur, which during the 
Carthaginian attack was struck by lightning and thus 
preserved from the fury of the barbarian. 

From this miserable make-believe I was led to the site, 
with its few ruins, of the Temple of Asklepios wherein the 
statue of Apollo by Myron once stood. These remains lie 
just within the confluence of the Hypsas with the Acragas, 
where it is said the Romans were encamped before they 
took the city. 

But it was not these few ruins which enchanted me but 
once more those temples along the steep. Andif they con- 
tinually drew my eyes in their touching ruin what must they 
have seemed to the homing triremes of Acragas, when in 

ta 


184 CITIES OF SICILY 





all their beauty and fairness, bright with colour and with — 
gold, they stood along the landfall from the sea? And ~ 
what in their beauty, their glory and their pride must they — 
have meant to those barbarous but acute Phoenicians, whose — 
cities were but encampments, whose thought was only gain, 
and whose business was the sea ? 

Not half so much, indeed almost nothing Greek, awaits — 
you in the city itself, the modern town of Girgenti. Those 
climbing streets, medieval still, in spirit at least, and all 
leading somehow or other, through devious narrow ways, 
up long winding staircases, or under the tunnelled houses, 
to the Cathedral, are picturesque enough but unhappily © 
contain scarcely a monument worth in itself the trouble 
of a visit. As you wander about, up and down through 
the sunlight and shadow of that precipitous town, you 
happen upon this building or that which catches you 
for a moment, but not one has any real distinction or 
beauty except the Cathedral, and not one anything worth a 
pause except S. Maria dei Miracoli. 

The Cathedral, which stands nearly a thousand feet above 
the sea, was begun they sayin the fourteenth century, and 
may well have stood upon the site of some temple; but it 
has been so largely modernized and restored that it is now 
only worth a visit for the sake of its fine old pillars, the 
admirable wooden roof which covers the nave, and the 
great treasure of the Sacristry at the end of the north aisle, 
the famous sarcophagus with its reliefs of the story of 
Phedra and Hippolytus, which is however only a Roman 
copy of a Greek original of the fourth century B.c. And 
yet Roman though it is, something finer than anything 
Roman, something Greek, seems still to hang about it 
like a spirit or a perfume, as though it had been so long 
in this old Greek city that something of its quality had 
entered into it—the ghost perhaps, restless amid so much 
misfortune, of Dorian Acragas having found there repose 
within the thick polished marble carved with the tragic 
story of Phedra and Hippolytus; that fatal passion so 
touchingly rendered after all by some reverent young Roman 
artist, carefully line by line, blow by blow, following his — 
betters. So grave, SO iovely, so reserved, how those figurem 


me 
bs or 


GIRGENTI — 135 


must have charmed him as he translated them for some 
snobbish patron who really preferred something much more 
realistic, without just that annoying spiritual or esthetic 
quality, but which here in Acragas, in Agrigentum rather, 
he found it the fashion to possess. So to-day some bar- 
barian millionaire carries off from the Lungarno in Florence 
a copy of the Venus de’ Medici, but with how much less 


’ good fortune, both in his choice of the original and the 


execution of the copy ! 

One picks one’s way carefully down those steep and 
storeyed streets from the Cathedral to the little church of 
S. Maria dei Greci where, beneath the church, the remains, 
the stylobate and the column bases of a temple may be 
seen, in a dark tunnel by the light of a candle. 

Nor is there much to be found in the Museum: an 
archaic Apollo, a sarcophagus, some vases and fragmentary 
marbles. 

But at least once before leaving Girgenti one must climb 
that steep way up the Rupe Atenea, the Rock of Athena, the 
ancient acropolis of the city, they say, where of old stood 
her temple for which they have searched in vain. 

On that narrow summit it is good to lie at evening, and, 
in the level light, take in that far stretched view which is 
said on a fortunate day even to include Etna so many 
many miles behind us. Yet it is arid enough what you 
see, the country not of the Lestrygones but of the sulphur 
miners, a yellow world which seems to reach to the very 
foot of these enormous escarpments, falling northward so 
giddily, so precipitously. 

Yes, that world of misery and sulphur swirls round 
the high acropolis of Girgenti and trickles down to the 
sea at Porto Empedocle. It does not spoil the southern 
landscape, still enchanted by its temples and its memories, 
but it certainly sours the Agrigentines and marks them 
with the stigmata of industrialism. You will as soon 
get agentle answer as a rough one, let us say, in Girgenti 
itself ; but not as soon in Porto Empedocle. 

That hill of the acropolis, which Empedocles split 
asunder, has let in the north wind with a vengeance; it 
but passes over that enchanted world at your feet, spell- 


186 CITIES OF SICILY 


bound pers as the gods knew how to a os » gtrilce ‘ 

Empedocle full in the face. One begins to unde 
why the Greek spirit perished from the world, a 
came to die. 3 





CHAPTER X 
SELINUNTE 


RAVELLING to-day, in Sicily at any rate, is not 
what it used to be. In the last quarter of the 
eighteenth century, when Henry Swinburne rode 
into Sciacca on the evening of December 29 he was received 
in a manner that I regret to confess it has never been my 
good fortune to meet with. ‘‘ The duke of Tagliavia, 
having been previously informed by my campiere that I 
had letters of recommendation to him, met me out of the 
town in his coach and lodged me in his own house. The 
principal persons of the town were invited to meet me and 
a most splendid entertainment was served up. I found the 
Sicilian cookery entirely different from that of France or 
England; sugar and spices were predominant in almost 
every dish.” : 

Alas, my experience of Sciacca recalls nothing half so 
pleasant in the way of a welcome as that. To begin with, 
the way from Porto Empedocle by train is incredibly 
tedious. Nothing above a misto uses this newly opened 
line, that is to say, the train is made up of goods-wagons, 
and a few coaches are attached to it for passengers. The 
rate of progress is unbelievably slow. To cover the 
seventy-four kilometri—say forty-five miles—over three and 
a half hours, from 10.30a.m. toI.3 p.m. arerequired. One 
begins to realize one ison the shore of the African sea. . . 

Nor is it only the rate and the discomfort of the journey 
that remind you of Africa. With every mile you traverse 
the landscape becomes more and more African, until at 
Sciacca itself you seem to have climbed up into one of 
those cities above the littoral of Tunisia or Algeria, and 
not so much to have left Europe behind, as to be upon 

137 


188 CITIES OF SICILY 


its last frontiers, the frontiers of the southern desert. The 
African sun pours down upon you, the African sea lies 
before you like a shield or a mirror dazzling your eyes, and 
tediously you crawl across a country that grows ever more 
oriental as you proceed, till when you have climbed up to 
Sciacca you are convinced that you are on the verge of the 
desert. 

There are, of course, oases in this harsh emptiness, and 
Cattolica and Ribera amid their vineyards are among them. 
There are also one or two places of considerable interest. 
Of these the crossing of the Platani in its wide valley 
touches one most, for this brackish stream was the ancient 
Halycus, the river which Dionysius of Syracuse established 
by the treaty of 383 B.c. as the eastern boundary of the 
Carthaginian dominions in Sicily. To the east of this 
stream the Greek cities were to be in safety, Greek civiliza- 
tion was to establish itself unmolested: all west of it was 
left toCarthage. Did I not say well that we were approach- 
ing Africa ? 

That treaty of Dionysius was confirmed by Timoleon 
in his treaty with the Carthaginians after his great victory 
on the Crimissus. But it would seem that by both these 
treaties three Greek cities were sacrificed—Himera, Selinus 
and that Heracleia which stood at the mouth of the stream, 
but unfortunately upon the left bank. 

I had meant to leave the train at Montallegro or Cattolica 
to visit the site of Heracleia, but found that I should have 
no time to get there and back to the station to catch the 
last train for Sciacca that night. I ought to have left 
Porto Empedocle at six in the morning. I had wished to 
see the place because recent excavations have brought to 


light some ruins of the theatre and a necropolis, The city 
was known of old as Heracleia Minoa. It got its first © 


name from Herakles, who won all western Sicily from 
Eryx in a wrestling match. This legend, too, points to 
the essential difference between western Sicily and the 
eastern and greater part of the island, and suggests that 
here was the frontier. Its second name it got from Minos, 
King of Crete, who landed here in Sicily in pursuit of 
Dedalus, and here founded a city to which he gave his 





auUvVIOS 











i. 





SELINUNTE 1389 


name. Herodotus, however, seems to regard Minoa as a 
colony of Selinus, and no doubt he is right in that it was 
re-colonized from that city, whose frontier it held. The 
city rose rapidly to prosperity, but was always at the mercy 
of the Carthaginians. When it was finally sacrificed by 
Dionysius it seems that he only confirmed the reality of 
the situation. 

The other place of considerable interest before one 
reaches Sciacca upon this route, is the town of Caltabellotta, 
which stands in a marvellous situation on the top of a 
precipitous mountain 2,200 feet above the sea, which, 
according to Swinburne, whom it greatly impressed by its 
lofty and inaccessible situation, is the ancient Triocala. 
The ruins of Triocala, however, are about a mile below, 
at a place called S. Anna. Here it was that Tryphon and 
Athenion, two runaways, established the headquarters of 
the republic of slaves whom they had rescued from bondage, 
in 103 8B.c. From here the Servile War in Sicily was directed, 
and here in 100 B.c. Tryphon still held out, though he was 
reduced at last, we know not how. 

All this country has even yet a bad reputation for 
brigandage and lawlessness. Caltabellotta, by its mere 
appearance, alarms the most sturdy traveller, and I do not 
know that Sciacca does not confirm him in his fears. 
Nothing, however, worse than fleas, lack of decent food, 
and general dirt and discomfort befell me. 

Little is to be gained by staying at Sciacca, which 
has nothing whatever to attract you beyond a very fine 
statue of the Blessed Virgin in the Cathedral, by Francesco 
Laurana, which is worth some trouble to see. The aspect 
of the place, however, on its abrupt rock and overshadowed 
by the ruins of the castles of the Luna and Perolla families, 
who assassinated one another during the whole of the 
fifteenth century, a feud famous even in Sicilian annals as 
the Caso di Sciacca, is very picturesque. Nothing whatever 
remains of the Therme Selinuntine of which we hear 
something in antiquity. 

From Sciacca one traverses an ever more African land- 
scape to Castelvetrano. Leaving Sciacca by the morning 
train at eight, I arrived at Selinunte before ten, and was 





140 CITIES OF SICILY a 


able to spend the whole day among the most magnificent 
ruins in Sicily before going on to Castelvetrano about four, 
Those six hours give you a superficial view of that amazing _ 
place, but two or three days are not enough to exhaust its — 
fascination and interest. Nor is there really any reason 
why two or three days as I found should not be devoted 
to them. ; 

The inn at Castelvetrano is a just possible hostelry, 
though it lacks every hygienic appliance, is unheated and 
not very clean. Still, as things go in the more out of the — 
way parts of Sicily—and in Sicily there are only five towns 
where you can obtain really good accommodation even if 
we include Messina: Messina, Taormina, Syracuse, Gir- 
genti and Palermo—Castelvetrano can be endured, for the _ 
host is anxious to do his best, and Selinunte is worth almost 
any trouble to see. 

The town of Castelvetrano numbers 22,000 inhabitants, 
and is deliciously situated in a smiling country of corn and 
wine and oil, overwhelmed with flowers of every colour of 
the rainbow. The town itself is worth seeing for a few 
fine buildings and churches and convents, and it possesses 
a museum in which, among many objects of minor interest, 
is a fine archaic bronze statuette of Apollo ; but, of course, 
the main reason for coming to the place is that it is the 
key to Selinunte, which in many ways is the most remark- _ 
able antiquity in Sicily, and certainly as well worth seeing _ 
as anything else in the island. E 

Selinunte lies some eight miles from Castelvetrano upon 
the low and sandy coast. It is approached through a 
delicious valley where every imaginable flower and tree and 
fruitful thing seems to flourish, a real valley of paradise with — 
orange and lemon groves, with almonds and olives, which _ 
opens at last upon the wide and sandy plateau, cut by 
ravines, upon which Selinunte stands. 3 

Nothing anywhere, nothing in Sicily certainly, is more — 
impressive, more tragic in its beauty than the first sight~ 
of Selinus lying there over the sea, ruin heaped on ruin, 
vast column upon column, enormous capital upon capital, 
temples, palaces, houses, streets, all piled up in gigantic ~ 
overthrow, in unbelievable disarray. The cityseems enor- 


SELINUNTE 141 


mous, seems to stretch for miles over the great sandy 
steppe, where the palmetto and the wild parsley grow 
together, and the lentiscus, the agave and the cactus are 
at home. And at first you think it a real city, till, as you 
approach it and come within the radius of its influence, 
its silence, its desolation, you find yourself gazing over the 
most extraordinary pile of ruins in Europe—stupendous 
heaps of broken stone, of columns, many of them partly 
erect, of fallen architraves, of broken capitals, of paved 
streets blocked by their overthrow, but in which the ruts 
of the chariot wheels are full of last night’s rain. 

You come first to the eastern hill, upon which lie heaped 
up the ruins of three temples, one of them among the largest 
temples in the world. But the body of the city, with the 
acropolis, stood upon the western hill, on that ridge thrust 
out over the sea beyond which lies the River Selinus, at 
the mouth of which the ancient port was built. The 
Hypsas lies to the east ; and all before you stretches the 
sea, breaking here upon a lean, desolate shore between Capo 
S. Marco to the east and the low Punta di Granitola to the 
west. 

Selinus was a colony of Hyblzan Megara, founded about 
650 B.c. Its name is said to have been derived from the 
wild parsley (c¢Awov) which still grows so plentifully here, 
and a leaf of this plant was in fact adopted as the symbol of 
the city and used upon its coins. It was the most western 
and therefore, of course, the most in danger of all the 
Greek cities of Sicily, but it was not, as it happened, the 
Carthaginian power which finally caused itsoverthrow. It 
was Segesta. Segesta was, in fact, the curse of Sicily. 
A non-Hellenic, a non-Carthaginian city, she was ready to 
call in either power to suit her own small purposes, and to 
her more than to any other may be attributed the failure 

of Greek civilization in the island. 

_ Unhappily, the territories of Selinus and Segesta had a 
common frontier upon the Mazarus, and as early as 580 B.c. 
we find the two peoples at war. 

Selinus, however, was guilty of siding with the Cartha- 
ginians in 480 B.c., though possibly it was to save her life, 
for she stood upon their confines. But her difficult posi- 

























142 CITIES OF SICILY a 


to 

tion upon the frontiers of two non-Hellenic peoples, the — 
Carthaginians and the Segestans, was too hard for her. 
Her quarrel with Segesta in 416 B.c. developed into one of — 
the causes of the Athenian Expedition, for she was sup- — 
ported by Syracuse and, in consequence, deceived Athens — 
took up the Segestan cause. The defeat of the Athenians — 
left the Segestans for the moment at the mercy of Selinus, — 
with the consequence that Segesta appealed to Carthage. ‘a 
Carthage sent a small force at once, and the Selinuntines ~ 
were defeated, but in 409 B.c. a vast army of at least 100,000 — 
men appeared from Africa, landed at Lilybeum and ~ 
marched upon Selinus itself. The Selinuntines defended — 
their city with courage, but neither Syracuse nor Acragas © 
was in a position to help them. After a siege of ten days — 
the city was taken, the fighting went on from house to ~ 
house, and most of the citizens were ruthlessly slain. — 
Indeed, we are told that 16,000 were slain, 5,000 made ~ 
prisoners, and only 2,600 escaped to Acragas. The walls — 
of Selinus were destroyed, and it was only as subject to — 
Carthage and as its tributary that the remnant of citizens — 
in Acragas was allowed to return. This arrangement was — 
confirmed in the treaty of Dionysius with the Carte a 
in 405 B.C. a 
That is really the end of Selinus as a Greek city, Its | 
material existence comes to an end 150 years later, when — 
in the First Punic War Carthage removed all the inhabitants a 
to Lilybeum and destroyed the city, 4 
We should, however, probably be wrong if we concluded _ 
that the destruction and desolation we now see were — 
wholly the work of the Carthaginians. They may be. — 
But they seem to be too complete for that, The earth- — 
quake is probably responsible for much of so final an ove 4 
throw, and to the anopheles mosquito, which found a — 
congenial breeding ground in the marshes, are probably 
due the silence and desolation all around, 3 
It was across this desolation, beautiful with under- 
growth and flowers for all its melancholy, I made my way — 
to the acropolis upon the western hill where it is thrust — 
out in a steep headland towards the sea. This hill falls 
steeply in the west to the marsh through which the Selinus — 


SELINUNTE 148 


flows, while another marsh bounds it upon the east. Upon 
the plateau, in shape like a clenched fist, stood the city and 
acropolis of Selinus, guarded northward at the wrist by a 
fortress, parts of which are still in position. The whole 
was enclosed by a wall, much of which remains, as do more 
than one of the paved streets and gateways, the way 
through the city from east to west to the sea gate down to 
the ancient port at the mouth of the Selinus, for instance, 
and the better defined and splendid street running through 
the city just to the west of the Temples from south to 
north. Such remains, such visible reminders of the 
everyday life of Selinus, are more touching if less splendid 
than those of the three majestic temples here piled so 
high, column upon column, in heap upon heap of carved 
stone. 

These temples, all of the Doric order and of the most 
ancient style, are allperipteral and hexastyle. Even their 
names are lost to us and they are known to archeologists 
by letters of the alphabet. Thus the southernmost temple 
is Temple A, the great temple north of it Temple C, and that 
northagain Temple D. Temple B is a small prostyle-tetra- 
style building which had Ionic columns and Doric entabla- 
ture at the south-east corner of Temple C. : 

The largest, the oldest and the most imposing of these 
temples is Temple C. It measured 230 feet in length by 
88 feet in width, the diameter of its columns was 6 feet at 
the base and the length of its cella was 131 feet, the breadth 
294 feet. Some authorities say it was dedicated to 
Herakles, some to Apollo. We shall probably never know 
even that now. It was, however, in this temple that two 
Englishmen in 1822, Messrs. Harris and Angell (the latter 
at the cost of his life for he died here of malaria), found 
the three Metopes and part of the entablature now in the 
Museum at Palermo. These Metopes represent a Quad- 
riga, with charioteer, and two Victories holding garlands, 
Perseus beheading Medusa, and Herakles with the Cer- 
copes. 

One wanders about these temples, climbing here and 
there, a little aimlessly, marvelling at the immensity of 
the columns, the vastness of those Doric capitals—for 


+ pape 
ae oe 


144 CITIES OF SICILY 


what can one do, what can one say before so much beauty — 
irrevocably slain ?—till one turns away at last, to pass, © 
always I think with a vague apprehension, for it all seems 
as though it was but empty since yesterday, and at laston 
tiptoe, up and down those streets, in and out of the houses, _ 
the foundations of houses, finding here a pile of broken 
crockery, there a little statue of terra-cotta, here a vase, 
there a skeleton, a pot of dust, a patch of violets. The — 
only human being you will see in that hushed loneliness 
which makes you feel like an intruder is, by chance, a 
little shepherd boy who has left his sheep to see you, — 
so strange a stranger, and who will shyly offer to show ~ 
you some new or secret thing, a newly-opened sepulchre, 
a little vase like the calyx of a flower in the bed of the 
torrent, a tiny broken head of Demeter, the lovely green 
corroded blade of a dagger or a worn coin of silver, the 
thin gold of a ring. % 
Wandering thus through the streets of this dead city, 
always in silence, where in truth only the flowers are at 
home, you come out on the north wall, through the gate 
there, to the fortress restored by Hermocrates in 407 B.C., 
with its bastions and semicircular tower, its deep trench ~ 
and well of water. There in the sun you may read what 
Diodorus has to tell of the end of this great city. How ~ 
Hannibal the Carthaginian came marching from Lily- — 
beum with 100,000 men and the Segestans, and arrived 
on the banks of the Mazarus, and there established his base. — 
Marching thence, he divided his army in twain, laid siege 
to the tall city and began to attack it with his machines. — 
He had, it seems, constructed six towers of a prodigious — 
height, and he battered the walls with battering rams ~ 
‘having iron heads, while his archers rained arrows upon — 
the defenders. 3 
The Selinuntines, who had long since lost all experience — 
of sieges, were taken by surprise. The sight of the enor- — 
mous engines and the multitude of the enemy filled them — 
with terror. However, they prepared to defend themselves, — 
hoping for aid from Syracuse. The young all took arms, — 
the aged prepared the defence, visited the ramparts and ~ 
exhorted the warriors not to let the city fall into the hands _ 








SELINUNTE 145 


of the enemy. The womenand children brought food and 
arrows to those fighting for their country, for the terror 
was so great that one had even implored the aid of the 
women. 

At last the battering rams made a breach in the walls, 
which had not even been kept in repair. The Cartha- 
ginians entered, but were repulsed—the breach was half 
restored when night fell. 

In that night the Selinuntines sent their chief men to 
hasten aid from Acragas and Gela and Syracuse. But 
those cities were too far, their help too distant. At break 
of day Hannibal had renewed the attack, and enlarged the 
breach with his engines. Backwards and forwards swung 
the battle; for nine days and nine nights in expecta- 
tion of succour the Selinuntines thrust back the cruel 
Pheenician faces, the blue painted savages from Iberia, 
the Segestans grinning with hate. Till at last from the 
women watching the battle from the roofs there went up 
a great cry. The Selinuntines were abandoning the walls, 
fighting in the streets now, in the narrow ways, in the 
temples, in the houses. The Carthaginians forced barri- 
cade after barricade under a storm of stones hurled from 
the roofs. The fight lasted till evening, and then at last 
there were no more stones. The mighty armies poured 
on and on, till they filled the whole city, and the night was 
loud with the lamentations of the Greeks, the howling joy 
of the barbarians. Then the carnage began—the whole 
population was cut to pieces without distinction of age or 
sex, the children in their mothers’ arms, the women, the 
old men. According to their custom the Carthaginians 
mutilated the dead : one worea girdle of Greek hands, another 
a necklace of fingers, and all upon their pikes or their jave- 
lins bore the Greek head of a man, a woman, or a child, 
Only the women who had sought refuge in the temples 
they spared. They gave them their lives, not out of pity, 
but because they feared that these women, reduced to 
despair, would fire the temples and thus rob them of their 
spoil. By midnight the city was looted, was on fire, 
a single flame ; and all the place covered with blood. ... 

In the afternoon the little shepherd led me by a path 


146 CITIES OF SICILY 


he knew across the Selinus to the necropolis that lies there, — 
and behind it to what appeared to be a suburb, with what — 
I took to be a Temple or Propylea, two great altars and the ~ 
ruins of other buildings. But I could not stay long away ~ 
from the great city on the hill. I returned there and © 
wandered out on to the acropolis behind the house of the ~ 
custode where the headland falls abruptly to the sea, — 
and then down the long street westward and out of the © 
sea-gate on to that lonely shore. ; 

Thence at last I made my way back to the eastern — 
plateau covered with enormous ruins which I had passed : 
in the morning on my way to the acropolis. “a 

Here stood three vast temples also nameless ; the south- — 
ernmost known as Temple E, the next Temple F, the last — 
Temple G. Again I stood amid a confusion of ruin that — 
was bewildering and overwhelming. + 

From Temple E, possibly the Temple of Hera, for a — 


dedicatory inscription to that goddess was found here in — 


1865, were taken the five Metopes now at Palermo, repre- — 
senting Athena and the Giant, another so damaged as to ~ 
be undecipherable, the third Herakles slaying Hippolyte, — 
the fourth Zeus and Hera on Mount Ida, the fifth Artemis: 5 
and Actzon. / 

From Temple F came two parts of Metopes also now at — 
Palermo, representing a combat of Giants. These were © 
discovered by Harris and Angell in 1822. a 

The last, Temple G, was, like the Temple of Olympian — 
Zeus at Girgenti, never completed. Like that Temple, — 
too, it was one of the largest in the world, only slightly — 
smaller than the giant of Acragas. It measured 371 feet ~ 
in length, 177 feet in breadth ; the columns were 534 feet — 
high, 11} feet in diameter at the base; the length of the a 
cella was 228 feet and it was 59 feet broad, It i is said to 4 
have been dedicated to Apollo. 7 

It is impossible to express one’s wonder or one’s admira- — 
tion at these mighty buildings now for so many ages laid — 
low, In their presence they seem toimpose a silence upon — 
one and that silence endures, They are beyond our com- 
prehension to-day, we have lost the sense of their reasonable — 
and perfect beauty, which we do not in the least feel or — 





SELINUNTE 147 


understand. Too much romantic darkness lies behind us ; 
we are more than half barbarian still. Unlike our medieval 
churches—for we have long ceased to build at all in that 
sense—these temples were not built to accommodate a 
crowd, or for the assembly of a vast congregation. They 
were the sanctuaries of the gods, but the gods were implicit 
in the whole landscape which they consecrated. Our 
cathedrals, our abbey churches were far otherwise: they 
were embattled against the world; the saints in their 
heavenly windows looked inward into the darkness, where 
in an isolated starry radiance Christ lay upon the altar, 
and a multitude convinced of sin and of death crouched 
on the pavement in fear and in self-reproach, or in an 
ecstasy of adoration. Reason can find no place in such 
buildings as these: it did not create them; they are not 
informed or inspired by its spirit. They are of the crowd 
and have always satisfied it. 

But these ... I cannot say how they were built or 
quite in what lay their intention, for I am a stranger, a 
barbarian from the farthest isles on the verge of the ocean. 
But they satisfy in me what those of my home can never 
satisfy, are not indeed aware of; a demand, a need for 
something reasonable, serene, absolute, and perfect ; 
something which is and is satisfied, which cannot change, 
in which no progress, no development is possible, because 
it is itself complete in itself, and is thus—if you can see— 
that beauty which is truth, which “‘is all ye know on earth 
and all ye need to know.” 


That evening I met the Director of the Museum of 
Castelvetrano, the kindest of men. I took the opportunity 
of asking him about my countryman Angell, who lost his 
life here among the ruins of Selinus, dying here of malaria 
in the ’twenties of last century. 

He could, however, tell me nothing of him, and the 
Dictionary of National Biography can tell me no more. 

I asked the Director whether Angell had been buried 
here, as I should wish to visit his grave. But he could not 
tell me this either. 

Then I said: ‘‘ To-morrow I shall go to the Campo 


148 CITIES OF SICILY 


_ Santo and see ; for how can they have taken himaway . 
in those days . .. from this distant place . . _ over § ) 
many mountains . . . without roads or means of tran = 
port ... so far from home?” % 
And he answered me: “ Signore, did England then 
ever lack a ship for her own?” The good Director! 
I regret that I was unable to learn anything of Angell 
in Castelvetrano. I should like to have stood beside his 
grave for a moment, and it grieved me to depart without 
learning anything of him. I should be grateful to ren 
whether he lies at home or in Sicily. I think somethi 
might be done in Castelvetrano in memory of him wil 
met his death among her ruins and marshes. 









a 


CHAPTER XI 


MAZZARA, MARSALA, MOTYA, TRAPANI, 
MOUNT ERYX 


ELINUNTE is the last city of Greek Sicily: it is 
S into Africa one comes immediately on leaving the 
oasis in which Castelvetrano stands at the head of 
her smiling vale: a country of long rolling dunes, arid 
and treeless for the most part, with here and there, some- 
thing that till now has been absent from the landscape, 
groups of tall palms on the verge of the sandy waste that 
loses itself at last almost imperceptibly in the sea. 
And though one cannot but regret the landscape of 
Greek Sicily, its variety, its mountains and valleys, its 
rocky headlancs and stony plateaux, where on the cliff 
top the shepherd feeds his sheep, in the stony torrent bed 
the neatherd leads his goats from spare pasture to pasture, 
in the deep vale the herdsman pipes while the kine browse 
in the shade, still this arid world which one enters so sud- 
denly at Mazzara has its charm, wholly subject as it is to 
the sun, to the infinite sky ; a desert of pale gold, without 
the variety of a European landscape, in which abide the 
many deities of the hills, the valleys, the streams ; having 
something of the formidable and monotonous uniformity 
of the desert, which cries all day long: There is but one 
God: Allah... 

Mazzara, Mazzara del Vallo, in some sort seems to sum 
up this strangecountry. At least, wretched as it is to-day, 
it was there in the ninth century the Saracens began to 
make themselves masters of Sicily, establishing their seat 
of government at Panormus, for all the western division of 
the island, which was known in our language as Val di 
Mazzara. For in the ninth and tenth century Sicily fills 

li 149 





¥ 


her old r6éle once more in the old tragedy which has been — 
played over and over again. She becomes again the prize — 
in dispute between Europe and Asia, not now between 
Greece and Carthage, between the smiling and human gods 
of Paganism and the bestial Semitic Moloch, but between 
Christendom and Islam, between Christ and Mahomet. | 
Already in 655 parts of Sicily had been plundered by ~ 
the Saracens and the victims sent to Damascus. Another 
raid had been made from Alexandria. Then as before 
came treason. Syracuse which had with perfect constancy — 
always faced and outfaced the Carthaginian, calls on his 
successor the Saracen to aid her in her revolt against the — 
Byzantine. Syracuse in 826 offers Sicily, the island of 
Sicily, to Ziyadet Allah, prince of Kairawan. In 827 
Saracen armies landed at the Punta di Granitola, between — 
Selinunte and Mazzara, and during 138 years the conquest 
of Sicily, there begun, continues, till the Saracens are — 
able to administer the island, which for this purpose they ~ 
divide into three valleys, known in our tongue as Val di 
Mazzara in the north-west, Val di Noto in the south-east, © 
and Val Demone in the north-east. j 
The first Saracen settlement was in the Val di Mazzara, 
and it roughly corresponds to the old Carthaginian occupa” 
tion, confirmed to Carthage by Dionysius in 391 B.C., 
comprising the whole of western Sicily beyond the Halycus. 
The capital was, like the later Carthaginian capital, at 
Palermo, and it was thence the conquest and the adminis- — 
tration of the other parts of Sicily, the Val di Noto and the ~ 
Val di Demone, were directed : to be established until first ; 
Byzantium in the person of that great Captain George 
Maniaces in 1038, and then in 1060 the Normans Robert — 
Guiscard and Roger appeared as the champions of Christi- A 
anity, the deliverers of Sicily from infidel bondage. : 
The Saracen conquest occupied as I say 138 years from ; 
827 till the last strongholds fell, Taormina in 963, an 
Rametta in 965. The Saracen administration continued 4 
undisputed for another 73 years, till George Maniaces- 
begins his four years of Christian victory to be followed 
by the reconquest, the thirty years’ work of Robert Guiscard 
and Roger, begun in 1060. During all that time, for 


150 CITIES OF SICILY 





MAZZARA, MARSALA, MOTYA 151 


about two centuries and a half, Europeans were subject 
to Saracen rulers, Christians to Moslems. Of course the 
condition of the Christians varied ; in one place they were 
just personal slaves, in another free communities subject 
totribute. That is merely to say that the Saracen conquest 
was not achieved all at once. But when in 965 the con- 
quest is complete, those free communities have disappeared, 
many have become Mohammedan, and those which remain 
Christian are utterly enslaved, subject, like the Christian 


communities to-day within the Turkish dominion, to 


massacre and contempt. There remained in spite of every- 
thing, these three things in Sicily: Saints, Scholars and the 
Greek language. Side by side with these was established 
the religion, the learning and the art of the Saracen. 
Mazzara saw the beginning of all this, and its successful 
establishment. You would not think it, for nothing of it 


at all remains there to-day—nothing that is of the Saracen 


dominion. But the old castle in the south-east corner of 
the wall which Count Roger erected in 1073 and the 
Cathedral which he founded, may be called fortresses against 
the Saracen dominion and the Saracen faith. _ 

That Cathedral, however, bears scarcely a mark of its 
origin to-day. Within, it has been quite recently restored 
and is wholly without character, its few treasures being 
works by the Gagini and their ‘school ; a group of the 
Transfiguration by Antonello Gagini in the choir, a statue 
of S. Vincent in the chapel in the left transept, and a statue 
of the Virgin and Child in the chapel in the right transept, 
where is also the fine sarcophagus of the Bishop Monta- 
_ perto, also by one of the Gagini. The ancient sarcophagi 
in the sacristy are Roman, not Greek, works. 

Nothing here indeed bears witness to the Saracen or 
even to the Byzantine. Some memory at least of both 
remains however in S. Nicold near the Porta di Mare, 


where you find a square church under a central cupola, 


rather like the church of the Admiral in Palermo, a work 
in which the Normans have employed the consummate 
craftsmanship of the Orient to build in its own way, 


though in their service. 


Upon leaving Mazzara one enters a country that might 


152 CITIES OF SICILY 






seem to be all a vineyard, and in so far to deny its Africa 
character, and the Carthaginian and Saracen who were — 
masters here for so long. But these vineyards are com- — 
paratively modern and bear witness not even to Sicilian — 
but to foreign enterprise. Here is grown the Marsala 
wine which Messrs. Ingham-Whitaker, Florio and Wood- 
house manufacture. i 

Marsala itself, with its 27,000 inhabitants, its busy pros- 2 
perity, its warehouses along the quay, its commercial ain 
might seem quite a modern place, and indeed it is an end — 
rather than a beginning. To find that beginning you ‘ 
must take a boat in the harbour and row five or six ni : 
up the low islanded coast till you come to the island of 
S. Pantaleo, which is the Carthaginian Motya. Here was ‘ 
the beginning of Lilybzeum, of Marsala that is. 

Motya lies three-quarters of a mile from that low and s 
sandy shore, to-day lined with salt factories, to which it 
was joined of old by an artificial causeway, something of 
which remains. It lies in an extraordinary position within 
the long low Isola Grande which was perhaps of old an 
isthmus joined on the north to the mainland ; and it was — 
just what it seems likely to have been, the site of the first 
Phoenician colony in Sicily, a commercial station that isja 
a depot of those great traders who were fond of choosing g 
such sites, as we are to-day. What Hong-Kong is to 
England in regard to China, Motya was to Carthage in © 
regard to Sicily. : 

It is the custom of all modern historians to deprecialia 
the Phcenicians and their successors here, the Carthaginians ; 
but they were the greatest seafaring people of whom we 
have any knowledge. Their ships were the best in the 
Mediterranean, and their sailors, unlike the Greeks and 
Romans who were terrified of the sea, had sailed the ocean, | 
perhaps circumnavigated Africa, and certainly cruised 
north as far as the British Isles and perhaps even to 
Iceland. If a work of maritime engineering had to be 
carried out it was the Phoenicians who proved to have the 
greatest skill, as for instance in the matter of the Athos 
Canal, when they alone were successful, and as Herodotus 
says, ‘“‘ they showed therein the same skill as in all else 


om 



















MAZZARA, MARSALA, MOTYA 158 


that they do,” adding this, that ‘‘ there is a meadow hard 
by, where they made a place for buying and marketing.” 
To them also we owe the alphabet. But they were cursed 
with a cruel and hideous religion; and though in this 
they are no worse than other barbarians, for their Moloch 
is not a whit more cruel than his cousin the Jewish Javeh, 
_they have been held to be damned for it, and their gradual 
disappearance and final dispersion or absorption by Rome 
hailed as a merciful deliverance. Their genius, however, 
was extraordinary and complementary to that of the 
Greeks and Romans. Had they endured, one may think 
that neither natural science nor discovery and commerce 
would have languished for so many ages as they did. 
Here on Motya they established themselves and their 
market, and like all their other depots in Sicily this too 
passed in time to their Carthaginian kinsmen. Thucydides 
tells us that the Phoenicians had settlements all round 
Sicily on promontories along the sea coast which they 
walled off, and on the adjacent islets, for the sake of trade 
with the Sikels. But when the Hellenes also began to 
come in by sea in large numbers the Pheenicians left most 
of these places and settling together lived in Motya, 
Soloeis (Solunto) and Panormus (Palermo) partly because 
_ they trusted in their alliance with the Elymi (of Mount 
Eryx and Segesta) and partly because from there the voyage 
from Sicily to Carthage is shortest. In fact the voyage 
_from Motya to Carthage is not roo miles. 
_ So Motya remained perhaps the greatest Carthaginian 
stronghold in Sicily till in the year 409 B.c. Hannibal, who 
had been called on by Segesta after the defeat of the 
Athenian Expedition, moored his great fleet behind the 
island after he had landed at the headland of Lilybeum, 
and begun his march upon Selinus, the first of the Greek 
cities to be overthrown. So it was finally upon Motya 
that Dionysius wreaked his revenge when he broke the 
Carthaginians in 397 B.c. He besieged the place with 
45,000 men and 200 ships of war and 500 ships of transport. 
The Carthaginians cut the causeway and though few in 
number, relying upon help from Carthage, prepared to 
resist him. Dionysius then built a mole of earth from 


154 CITIES OF SICILY 





the mainland to the island. Upon this mole he constructed — 
a new and formidable engine, the catapult, then used for 
the first time. A great fight took place upon the mole, — 
but little by little the Greeks battered the walls to pieces — 
and the long resistance having exasperated them, when — 
they entered they put all to the sword, men, women and ~ 
children, without sparing age or sex. This was exactly 
what the Carthaginians had done at Selinus. There is — 
nothing to choose between Greek and Carthaginian in ~ 
matters of this kind. ‘ 

Dionysius garrisoned Motya, but the next spring another — 
Carthaginian general Himilcon landed at Panormus with a 
huge army and took it. | 

Motya, however, never re-arose. Himilcon decided that — 
another spot upon that coast was better fitted for defence. — 
That spot was the headland of Lilybeum, the most western — 
point of Trinacria, of Sicily. Thither he transferred what — 
was left of the inhabitants of Motya which then disappeaaaa 
from history. 

Lilybzeum possessed a fine harbour upon the north and 
it was there Hannibal had landed his great army in 409 B.C. 
There was water there too, for a spring gushed forth from ~ 
a cave on the promontory, as it does still. Naturally of — 
great strength, for it is surrounded on three sides by the 
sea and defended eastward by marshes, it was rendered — 
stronger by art, and was able to hold out when all else 4 
that was Carthaginian i in Sicily was overthrown. In 276B.¢c. 
it alone withstood Pyrrhus who abandoned the siege after : 
two months ; and from 250 B.c, in the First Punic War it a 
withstood the Romans for ten years and was only abandoned — 
at last when the Roman victory of the Aigates in 241 B. Ce 
compelled the Carthaginians to conclude peace. 

As a Roman town it was the headquarters of the fleet | 
in the Second Punic War and it was from Lilybeeum that 
Scipio sailed to conquer Africa. Indeed it plays its part % 
all through Roman history; and when the Saracens 
occupied the island they attached so much importance to — 
it-that they re-named it Marsa-Allah, the Port of God, — 
whence its present name is come. It was the Emperor — 
Charles V who destroyed it, for he blocked up the harbour ~ 





ee ee 

















MAZZARA, MARSALA, MOTYA 155 


to protect it from the Barbary pirates, and ever since 
Trapani has taken its place as the chief port of western 
Sicily. 

Really nothing remains of Carthaginian Marsala or of 
the Roman city either. The white and oriental city of 
to-day is altogether given up to two modern industries:: 
the manufacture of salt and the manufacture of wine. 
This last was introduced here by the Englishman John 
“Woodhouse about 1770; and the immense caves of the 
English firms still in business here—Ingham-Whitaker and 
Woodhouse and the Italian Florio are well worth a visit. 

Nor should an Englishman at any rate omit to visit 
the Duomo, which strangely enough is dedicated in honour 
of S. Thomas of Canterbury. How this came about I 
have never been able to discover. 

The Cathedral is in form a latin cross divided into three 
naves by sixteen marble columns which are said, I know 
not with how much truth, to have been intended as a 
present to Canterbury Cathedral. Here are various works 
by Sicilian artists. In the third chapel on the right is a 
marble statue of S. Thomas the Apostle with a relief of 
the Incredulity of the saint by Antonello Gagini. In the 
right transept is a picture of the Presentation in the Temple 
by Mariano Riggio da Messina (1593). In the chapel 
right of the choir is the early sixteenth-century tomb of 
Antonio Liotta. Other works by the Gagini and their 
pupils are to be seen in the chapel to the left of the choir. 
The church also possesses eight magnificent Flemish tapes- 
tries of the sixteenth century. 

The little Museum in Via Caserma XI Maggio, by the 
Library, is worth a visit. It contains numerous antiquities, 
though nothing of much importance ; a marble torso of a 
man, a mosaic pavement, an early Christian sarcophagus 
ip a fifteenth-century triptych of the Adoration of the 

agi. 

In the Carmine church is a Madonna and Child attributed 
to Laurana as well as works by the Gagini; and in the 
strange little church of S. Giovanni Battista between the 
city and the sea is a statue of the saint by Antonello Gagini. 
Here one may descend by steps to the so-called Grotta 


156 CITIES OF SICILY 






























della Sibilla Cumana. Here is the spring of fresh water 
of which Diodorus speaks, though what it has to do with — 
the Cumzan Sibyl I was for long puzzled to determine. 
The Cumzan was the most celebrated of the Sibyls—those — 
prophetic women of various countries and times. She it 
was who was consulted by Atneas before he descended into — 
Hades. Livy tells us she came to Italy from the East, 
and it was she who according to tradition appeared before 
king Tarquin offering him the Sibylline books for sale. The — 
guardian of the church seemed to think that the Cumzan 
Sibyl had been buried here: a fact which might have 
interested Samuel Butler, but which I confess I could not — 
make head or tail of, though it is amusing to note that — 
Victor Bérard connects the Pheacians with Cume: and — 
Butler maintains that Pheacia was Trapani and the 

“authoress of the Odyssey ’”’ was Nausicaa herself. Per- 
haps in the tomb of the Cumzan Sibyl these delightful but — 
mutually destructive theories may be reconciled. a 

I say nothing of Garibaldi and his Thousand who landed — 
here in 1860 to conquer Sicily. The landing which was 
not undisputed was possibly assisted or encouraged by the 
mere presence of English men-o’-war. ‘-s 

From Marsala I went on through a country which in ~ 
spite of the sun, the palm trees and its southern air had, ~ 
perhaps by reason of its windmills, something of Holland — 
about it, in its flatness and subjection to the sea, but that 
sea was the African and as blue as a sapphire stone. I - 
came at length to Trapani, the town which has for all 
purposes of the sea supplanted Marsala, and found clean 
if not very comfortable quarters at the Grand Hotel, | 
opposite the landing stage. \ q 

Here at Trapani it is all a matter of coming and going, - 
for many steamers going and returning to the Eastern 
Mediterranean call here and it is the nearest port for Tunis, — 
for Africa. 

Trapani is an empty little town wholly or almost wholly © 
of the sea, burnt white in summer by an implacable sun, 
windswept in winter and as old, nay older, than history. 
It contains nothing whatever in the way of a work of art 
unless it be the lovely rose-window in the Templar’s church 


\ TRAPANI 157 


of S. Agostino, for the Crucifixion by Van Dyck in the 
Cathedral has been repainted and the Andrea della Robbia 
in the church of S. Maria di Gest is a school piece. 
Nevertheless, a day or two may be very pleasantly spent 
in Trapani, along the shore there under Monte S. Giuliano 
in view of the A®gadian isles rising up so steeply and 
- exquisitely in the west, and then there is Eryx... 
Trapani, the ancient Drepanum or Drepana, was in the 
first instance certainly not a Carthaginian foundation. 
For ages before the Carthaginians visited these shores it 
had probably served as a port and dependence of the 
neighbouring city of Eryx upon that great isolated hill to 
the north of it, which we call Monte S. Giuliano, but which 
was famous throughout the ancient world as Eryx, the 
site of a most primitive and renowned Temple of Venus. 
Drepanum thus appears first in connexion with certain 
Trojan legends which it shares with Eryx and Segesta the 
sanctuary and the cities of a people certainly non-Hellenic 
and as they liked to think of Trojan origin. These people, 
whatever may have been their real descent, because of 
their tradition and belief played a great and even a deter- 
mining part in the history of the island. Because they 
were non-Hellenic their quarrel with Hellas in the person 
of Selinus was impossible of solution. Because their 
quarrel was insoluble they called in first Athens, then 
Carthage, and finally Rome, to try and decide it in their 
favour. The last succeeded and from that moment these 
people cease to be of any account and disappear from 
history. Rome in fact was exceedingly flattered to find a 
link with a people who had so long claimed a Trojan descent. 
She flattered and supported them because their very 
existence flattered and reassured her. The greatest of her 
poets makes the most of this, draws it out of its vagueness, 
gives it life and definitely alots Trapani a place in the 
voyage of Aineas, makes it the scene of the death of Anchises 
and of the funeral games celebrated in his honour by A‘neas. 
The thing was done. Legend becomes in a moment more 
actual than history, becomes real and immortal in the 
hands of genius. 
Drepanum comes into history proper with the First 


158 CITIES OF SICILY 


Punic War. About 260 B.c. the Carthaginian gerieral 
Hamilcar fortified the promontory and founded a town © 


ef 

hk 
ae. 
= 






there to which he transferred most of the inhabitants of 4 


Eryx. Like a true Carthaginian he had noted the excel- 
lence of the harbour, far better than that of Lilybeeum 


and quite as convenient to Carthage. Drepapum remained — 


one of the chief Carthaginian strongholds throughout the 
war and in 250 B.c. it and Lilybeum were the only two 
places in the island that remained in Carthaginian hands, 


Then during the ten years’ siege of Lilybeeum it became the — 
headquarters of the Carthaginian fleet which in 249 B.C. 


sailed out to defeat and indeed annihilate the Romans 


under the consul P. Claudius, a defeat amply avenged seven ~ 


years later off the A’gadian isles. 


Those acts of the Carthaginians whereby they removed 


the inhabitants of Eryx—and more than once—to Drepa- 
num point to Eryx as the real originator of Drepanum. 
Now Eryx lies about six miles north of Drepanum two 


miles inland from the sea-coast. It is in the first place — 


the mountain Mons Eryx now Monte S. Giuliano, an isolated 


peak that looks far higher than it is, for in fact it rises 3 


only 2,465 feet above the sea. Virgil, like many others, has 
been deceived by its isolation and its abrupt rise from the 
sea plain and has spoken of it as a mountain really on an 
equality with Etna 10,000 feet high. ‘‘ Vast as Athos, 
vast as Eryx,” sings Virgil in the seventh AZneid. 

The fame of Eryx was due above all not to its height 
or to its situation, but to the sanctuary which stood upon 


its summit, the Temple of Venus, founded it was said by 


her son Eneas, the Temple of Venus Erycina. 

Diodorus tells another story. He ascribes the foundation 
both of the temple and of the city, to a hero named Eryx 
who during Herakles’ journey through Sicily wrestled with 
him and was thrown. This Eryx a son of Venus and Butes 


the king of this country is by Virgil called the brother of 


/Eneas. 

But all these legends of Drepanum, of Eryx and of 
Segesta, point to the same fact recorded by Thucydides 
that these three cities belonged to a non-Hellenic people. 


Thucydides thus explains it. ‘On the capture of Iium 


ge is > 
ee Oe ee el ee 


ae e 


So aah MS Ate A ae le il 


MOUNT ERYX, MONTE 8S. GIULIANO 159 


some of the Trojans who had escaped the Achzans came 
in boats to Sicily, and settling on the borders of the Sica- 
nians were called as a people Elymi, while their cities were 
named Eryx and Egesta.” That is all Thucydides says, 
but Diodorus goes further and relates in detail the tradition 
of their arrival and settlement here. It is here comes in 
the hero Elymus the Trojan. Strabo says he sailed from 
Troy with Aineas and took possession of Eryx and Lily- 
beum and called the rivers about Egesta, Scamander and 
Simois, and in this as in other legends Egesta is the city 
of Acestes. 

It is obvious then that in these places we come upon a 
people not native to Sicily as the Sicanians were, nor even 
immigrants like the Sikels, yet a people which had been 
established in Sicily in this corner of Sicily for many ages 
before the first advent of the Greeks. The notion of their 
Trojanorigin may be true or it may point only toa“ Pelasgic”’ 
extraction. At any rate the part they play in history is 
consistently anti-Greek in a fashion really definite beyond 
anything which the natives were capable of. We see them 
constantly leagued with the unappeasable enemies of the 
Greeks, their cities, their philosophy and their culture, the 
Phoenicians of Motya and Panormus, the Carthaginians of 
Carthage. Yet in their building at least, and indeed in 
their religion they are much nearer the Greeks than the 
natives who appear as mere savages, and than the Phceni- 
cians and Carthaginians whose oriental rites were obnoxious 
to the Greek mind. They are said to have become Hel- 
lenized, but what is the evidence of this; the Temple and 
Theatre at Segesta, the works of art there which Cicero 
describes? They are a mystery that in all probability 
will never be made plain. 

It takes about an hour and a half in the public automobile 
to go from Trapani to the town of Monte S. Giuliano on the 
summit of Eryx. The journey is very well worth while if 
only for the ever widening view which opens before you 
as you ascend, of the A®gadian Isles, Hiera, (Maretimo) 
with Monte Falcone, the most distant, Aegusa (Favignana) 
and Phorbantia (Levanzia), then the plain to the south 
with Marsala: these to the west. To the east rise up the 


160 CITIES OF SICILY 






























mountains of San Vito; to the north the headland | of & 
Céfano ; and to the south they say the Island of Pantelleria _ 
and Cape Bon, in Africa. q 
_ This view must in fact repay the traveller for in Monte 
San Giuliano itself there is almost nothing to see: tw 
works by Gagini, one in the Cathedral and the other & 
the Biblioteca, and a Madonna by Francesco Laurana also 
in the Cathedral, the old restored towers and the Castle 
now a prison. Practically nothing is left of the famous 
Temple of Venus—a few foundations in the castle, the Arco 
del Diavolo and the reservoir in the castle garden. But = 
you may see still something of the ancient walls of the 
place if you go out of the Porta Trapani and pass round ~ 
to the Porta Spada. These vast blocks are said to bear 
Phoenician characters. = 

The Temple of Venus Erycina was according to Strabo 
‘well filled with women sacred to the goddess, whom the 
inhabitants of Sicily and also many others offered in 
accomplishment of their vows ’’; but he goes on to say 
that in his day the temple was not near so well supplied 
with priestesses and women as aforetime. Diodorus his 
contemporary, however, tells a different story. He says — 
the goddess had a particular predilection for this temple _ 
and that unlike others, which after an increasing fame 
lose their splendour and are neglected, this alone although _ 
very ancient has never ceased to be famous and to be © 
sought after and to increase in estimation. He tells us 
that through long generations the Sicilians venerated this — 
goddess and offered her magnificent sacrifices as later did 
the Carthaginians. In fact the Carthaginians seem to have ~ 
recognized in her their own Astarte or Ashtaroth and of — 
course the ritual and mysteries here were obscene, and not ~ 
likely to perish as less fundamental rites might do. The — 
temple was enormously wealthy in silver and plate and it — 
was this wealth which the Segestans displayed to the — 
Athenian ambassadors as that of the private citizens of — 
Segesta and thus helped to tempt Athens to launch the ~ 
expedition against Syracuse in 415 B.c. Pausanias declares — 
that this Temple of Venus Erycina was not less wealthy — 
than that at Paphos. 


MOUNT ERYX 161 


A beautiful and curious rite seems to have been practised 
here and certainly marks this cult as in part at least Phoeni- 
cian. For the goddess yearly left her Temple on Eryx 
for a journey to Africa, and took her doves with her and 
Athenzeus records that ‘‘ At Eryx there is a certain season 
which the Sicilians call ‘The Departure,’ at which time 
they say the goddess is departing into Africa. At this 
time all the doves of the temple disappear as if they had 
accompanied the goddess on her journey. And after nine 
days when the festival called xataywyta that is to say ‘ The 
Return’ is celebrated first a single rose-coloured dove 
returns flying across the sea, no other than Aphrodite 
herself, and when it has flown into the Temple the rest 
follow speedily. And on this, all the inhabitants around, 
who are well to do, feast, and the rest clap their hands 
for joy. And at the time the whole place smells of butter 
which they use as a sort of token of the return of the 
Goddess.” 

So these doves of Sicily ‘“‘ the fairest shaped of all their 
_ kind” to the eye of the mind at any rate, bore Aphrodite 
to and fro over her own sea between the two heights, 
visible the one to the other, of Mount Eryx and the Pro- 
montory of Hermes. But Venus waxeth old, as Lyly has 
it; once she was a pretty wench, when Juno was a young 
wife ; now crow’s foot is on her eye and the black ox hath 
trod on her foot, and no mortal any more goes up to Mount 
Eryx because of her. 





CHAPTER XII 
SEGESTA 


O one morning that promised well, but did not keep 
its promise, I set out for Calatafimi and Segesta. 
All went well as long as I was in the lowland country, 
but as the day grew older and I began to enter the hills 
the wind got up and with the wind came the rain. I 
hurried on ; there was nothing else to do, it was too late 
to return, and in all the twenty miles between Trapani and 
Calatafimi there is no town, no village even, where it would 
be possible to sleep. The way grew steeper as I advanced 
into those dark mountains, which at every turn seemed to 
grow more savage, more hostile, more threatening ; and 
when at last buffeted and weary, wet to the skin and very 
much afraid, I came into the Gaggera valley and presently 
turned up the steep by-way to Calatafimi, I was so weary 
and undone that even the horror of the miserable ostena 
there did not appal me, was in fact most welcome in spite 
of its dirt and misery. 

After a restless and unhappy night I arose to find the 
rain gone but the wind still buffeting about the miserable 
streets. It was still very early, but I wondered even more 
than I had done all night, why Samuel Butler had chosen 
this wretched village to live in? Why here of all places 
in Sicily ? There was Syracuse—but the unique and indi- 
vidual character of Syracuse may have baulked him, or 
perhaps he remembered the young German savant who 
declared that Syracuse was a place to be born in or to 
die in but not to live in... There was Girgenti, there 
was even Castelvetrano. . : 


And then suddenly at a turn of the way a little below 


the town I seemed to understand. The clouds had blown 
162 


ed ere Mis ien Gn Bar ieee rig eae ee 


RS ee eg aT 


iw 





ion 


SEGESTA 163 


away, the sun shone forth, the blue sky appeared, the hills 
stood clear; and there aloft among the summits, and 
literally in the sky, stood a Temple—it seemed not made 
with hands—serene and perfect established for ever in the 
heavens. It was of the Doric order, still and solemn, and 
yet so ideal and full of grace it was impossible to believe 
the human heart had conceived such perfection or human 
hands contrived such beauty. It stood there on high 
amid those savage hills like a thought in the heart of God, 
like a benediction. Its light confounded their darkness, 
its calm their wild disorder, its perfection their tragic 
chaos. A man who had once been blessed with this 
revelation must ever desire to return to it, could not but 
return to it, in spite of every danger and every difficulty, 
for here alone was harmony and peace. One would say 
like the Apostles on the Mount of Transfiguration : it is 
good for us to be here. 

There is nothing whatever to be seen in Calatafimi, even 
the osteria which once bore the name of Samuel Butler is 
now known as the Garibaldi, for Garibaldi in this neigh- 
bourhood won his first victory over the Bourbon troops after 
landing at Marsala. A street, however, is still named after 
Samuel Butler. 

__ And so presently I made my way down that twisting 

path to the highway, to the valley, and trudged on through 
an ever wilder landscape on the road to the ford over the 
Gaggera whence that Temple, so wonderful a vision from 
Calatafimi, might be reached. 

The country was wild and bare, the terrible mountains 
everywhere towered up about the narrow valley, but the 
valley itself was as lovely as they were harsh and jagged, 
and one half forgot the tragic mountain landscape in 
that delightful vale. So I went on through the boisterous 
spring morning till the valley opened northward and I 
came to the place where the ford was, where the ford was 
said to be. 

But no ford was there. The great rains of the previous 
night had swollen the torrent, till, without wading, it would 
have been impossible to cross, and even so, those yellow 
waters looked highly disagreeable, not to say dangerous. 


164 CITIES OF SICILY 





So I sat down in that bare place and began to consid " 
these things. Nothing was in sight, the Temple had been _ 
hidden all the way from Calatafimi, and there was not a : 
house or shed in all that terrible landscape, nothing but — 
the mountains, wild and bare, harsh rocks, the great lines 
of the jagged hills, the savage ravines and the chaos of 2 
the wind. | 

And as I, disheartened, considered my case, it came to - 
me that this torrent which barred my way was of old — 
called the Scamander ; and remembering this I drew out ~ 
of my sack the little Oxford I/iad that goes with me, and — 
read in the XXIst Book: how Achilles in his sorrow and _ 
his madness fought with the Trojan river, of which this is — 
a namesake and a memory, for as Strabo says and Diodorus © 
also, the fugitive Trojans who founded Segesta named the ~ 
streams here Simois and Scamander in memory of their 
home. ‘ 

And the verses of Homer, as often before, so here, acted 
like a charm. For no sooner had I come to those linesin 
which the tragic and despairing soul of Achilles calls upon 
Zeus, and Poseidon and Pallas Athene stand beside him, — 
who was like to be drowned in the raging flood, than there a 
stood before me two men with mules as though awaiting 
my pleasure. a 

Very far were they, as at once became evident, from 
the immortals: unless indeed they were the servants of 
that thief Hermes. For they at once began to demand of 
me incredible sums of money, taking advantage of Sca- 
mander’s wrath. And presently, after many, too many, 
words, we came to agreement, and I saw that it was not ~ 
my doom to be vanquished by the river, nor, beyond what 
was fitting, by them neither. So I mounted the white 4 
flea-bitten mule, and they took the other gaunt beast, — 
and one after the other we entered furious Scamander and is 
came safe across to the other side. a 

But why should the traveller who has to face so many — 
hardships in Sicily that it will take a hundred years to do ae 
away with, why should the unfortunate traveller have this 
also to bear ? Surely there should be a bridge across the 
Gaggera? All through the year, but especially in vine 3 


nhs 












SEGESTA 165 


travellers and tourists in great numbers visit Segesta. All 
are at the mercy of the peasants, who reap a rich harvest, 
because at this place there is no bridge over the Gaggera. 
I do not grudge the peasants their gain; but I object to 
being forced to mount their wretched mules amid a pile 
of ragged and verminous clouts that do duty for saddles. 
This is objectionable even for me, and is a thousand times 
worse for a woman, who has certainly not come from Pal- 
ermo prepared to ride straddle on a foul beast that is 
nothing but a flea bag, supported by a peasant who is a 
great deal worse. Let the ambition of Signor Mussolini 
embrace this also, to be Pontifex Maximus. It was among 
the imperial titles and might be adopted without prejudice 
to any Papal right, if it carried with it the most obvious 
duty it implies. 

So we crossed the stream, not without difficulty, and 
began to climb the long hill over the bare downs up to 
Segesta. That road, if road it can be called, is after rain 
little better than a morass. Open to every wind that blows 
it receives like a steep torrent all the rain of the hills, and 
on that morning the mules were over the fetlocks in a 
peculiarly slippery mud which made the going exceedingly 
irksome. Little by little, sometimes going forward, some- 
times floundering back, we pushed on, till after some 
three-quarters of an hour we came to the house of the 
custode immediately under the hill of the Theatre, the 
main hill on which stands the Temple, now in full view, 
still to be overcome. It was done at last and I alighted 
amid the barking of sheep dogs very stiff and weary on 
the very steps of the Temple in a great meadow of asphodel. 

In spite of the dogs of the pastovi, which soon slunk 
away, or at least ceased their cerberus baying, what struck 
me first was the immense loneliness of this sanctuary 
literally among the mountain peaks. It stands there, half 
inaccessible as it is, among those terrible mountain heights, 
where only the sun and the wind and the rain are at home, 
on a great lofty platform, about which a wild ravine winds, 
in a harsh meadow of the most inhuman of all flowers, 
that ghost of a flower, the asphodel. Fittingly do those 
flowers, which belong to the dead, surround it, for it lives 

12 


166 CITIES OF SICILY 


if at all that half life of the departed, and might well have 
been found by Odysseus in that dim world where even 
Hector and Achilles would meet ineffectively, their spears 
falling from their nerveless hands, their shields from their 
sides. Even for those voices to be heard, to vibrate ever 
so feebly upon the stagnant air, that rite of blood was 
necessary, which filled the trench with the black life of the 
sacrificial rams and sheep. Those asphodels, so faintly 
purple, the mere ghosts of flowers, might well flourish in 
that world of mist and cloud, where the powerless dead 
abide in the house of Hades. 

The shrill wind moaned and whistled through those 
pale columns as through a forest of stone. Strange birds, 
vultures or eagles,—harpies maybe—circled above the 
incomparable skeleton, screaming and beating their wings 
against the dark and jagged cliffs of the ravine, and between 
the bursts of pallid sunshine a bitter rain beat upon the 
stones from which a faint and golden light seemed to shine. 
It is enchanted, this hollow temple of the dead ; in silence 
it awaits the voices it has never heard, the chant of the 
priests of sacrifice, the voices of the hierophants, the lowing 
of the victims. 

I lifted my eyes and looked around. The landscape in 
its incredible, its terrible and majestic beauty, intercepted 
thought, insisting on its tragic loveliness. I cannot des- 
cribe its far stretched symmetry, which the sun would 
suddenly glorify, line after line of mountain, peak beyond ~ 
peak, over valley and forest, to a far away glimpse of the ~ 
sea, of deepest and loveliest blue, between the awtul beauty — 
of those savage, those infernal hills. 

Amid this sublime world, summing it up, as it were, — 
and expressing it, the Temple stood, a symbol of that © 
Hellenic effort, which, though unachieved, has redeemed — 
mankind: its reason resolving that sublime unreason, its — 
calm summing up that infinite chaos, its security and estab- * 
lishment denying that terror, its beauty explaining that — 
wild and savage energy, that harsh and unappeasable life, — 

Presently, when the wind seemed to abate a little, I 
set out to climb the other hill, half an hour away, on which . 
the Theatre stands, really, save the débris, the only other — 





THE THEATRE, SEGESTA 





GREEK STREET AT SELINUNTE 








- SEGESTA 167 


monument of this solitude, of this fateful city, which, here 
in the presence of that Temple, seemed to bear witness to 
_ something older than any Hellenic foundation, in which 
all that came to such perfection later was tragically im- 
plicit, bearing witness to that crime of burning Troy. 

Is that too fanciful? Come then to these savage hills 
on which that white Temple stands like a flower; or, 
lying there on a calm and fortunate day of spring, amid 
the warm stones hidden in the tall asphodel, read as I did 
the last book of the Iliad, read again the most sublime 
verses that it has been given to mortals to repeat, read 
_ again the Ransom of Hector. Those columns, that 
_architrave, these hills and this beauty shall explain what 
I mean; something, maybe, rather to be felt than under- 
stood. 

Far loftier than the hill, the isolated hill, upon which 
that Temple stands, the hill of the Theatre is upreared 
almost precipitously over the valley, and gives you a far 
wider, and, indeed, a more noble prospect, in which the 
lines of that far stretched landscape become serene, 
become harmonious and musical. The hills rejoice on 
every side, are joyful together, and as the Hebrew prophet 
foresaw, seem about to break forth into singing. Before 
you think of the Theatre it is they which you see: yet it 
is the Theatre which, as it were, marshals them in such 
array, as though in some majestic dance to the music of 
the spheres. 

The Theatre opens and looks almost due north to that 
wonderful jewel of sea lying there beyond Castellamare, 
The hills rise up from the south-west, and first amid those 
incomparable and musical lines stands up Monte Sparagio ; 
then as your eyes travel north far loftier Mont’ Inice and 
so beyond the folds, fold upon fold, is disclosed to you the 
sea, the headland of Capo di Rama, and the far hills of 
the Monti Palermitani above Alcamo, that Arabian place, 
Then, in ever nearer and harder lines, the hills rise one 
above the other in the north-east, to Monte Bonifato and 
so to the savage hills I had crossed. 

It is hard to drag one’s eyes away from such a prospect 
and turn to the Theatre which has given it life. 


168 CITIES OF SICILY 


One comes up to the Theatre from behind, across the ~ 
site of the city itself, Segesta of old, through some few 
unrecognizable ruins and fragments of walls scattered amid — 
the asphodels. It catches your breath. Here on this hill — 
top, among mountains over 3,000 feet high, you suddenly 
find yourself looking across a building almost as complete 
as the Theatre of Syracuse, though on a smaller scale. 
It still possesses the usual semicircular precintio and sixteen 
tiers of seats in excellent preservation. The building is 
formed in a fold of the hillside on the steep rocky slope, 
its general form and arrangement are purely Greek. The 
theatrum proper, which is 205 feet in diameter, is divided 
into seven cunet with vomitort. The orchestra in part — 
remains, but nothing, or almost nothing, is left of the stage. _ 
And for me at least that stage is not haunted by the ghosts 
of the tragedies of Aischylus or Sophocles, for I cannot — 
believe that it was not always filled, as the whole Theatre 
is to-day, by that marvellous landscape of mountain and 
valley and sea, the little towns shining on the dark hill- 
sides, Alcamo, Partinico, Borgetto, Balestrate, Monte- 
lepre ; ; and beyond, between the mountains, the beauty 
of the sea, blue as the eyes of Cassandra which were like 
the violets, and, like her, too, to-day, with the aspect of 
a wild beast newly caught. 

Yes, even in the most fortunate hour, that landscape has 
something savage and untamed about it, like the beauty 
of Cassandra in the car of Agamemnon, awaiting in the 
sun and the red dust the commands of Clytaimnestra, and — 
crying out upon Apollo. 

So I thought, as I made my way carefully over the stones — 
down to the Temple precincts upon the lower hill. Segesta 
has something of the tragedy of Troy about it, of Troy, — 
which, according to Thucydides, here no doubt adopting a — 
tradition current among the Greeks, was the author of — 
its being. For some of the Trojans, he says, who had ~ 
escaped the Achzans, came in boats to Sicily and settling — 
on the borders of the Sicanians, were called as a copia 
Elymi, while their cities were named Eryx and Egesta. — 
This tradition was readily accepted by the Romans, ie ‘ 
because of it, eagerly claimed a kindred origin with thas 


ee 


SEGESTA 169 


Segestans. Segesta herself came to believe that she had 
been founded by A®gestus, the Acestes of Virgil, and as 
all the ancients were fond of doing, ascribed to this per- 
sonage a semi-divine origin, saying that he was born of a 
Trojan damsel Segesta by the river god Crimisus. Now 
the Crimisus has always puzzled the geographers in spite 
of the fact that Timoleon won his great victory over the 
Carthaginians upon its banks. It would, however, appear 
to be the Fiume Freddo which flows into the Gulf of Castel- 
lamare after passing Segesta about five miles away to the 
east, on the other side of Calatafimi. The rivers of Segesta 
were, as we know, the Scamander and the Simois, Trojan 
streams, to-day represented by the Gaggera and the Pispini 
I suppose. 

However all this may be, it is certain that the Greeks 
always regarded the Segestans as barbarians and yet distinct - 
from the Sicanian and Sikelian natives. They themselves 
believed themselves to be Trojans, and either in consequence 
of this tradition, or for other and less fundamental reasons, 
of which we can discern little, they were consistently the 
enemies of the Greeks, while as Trojans they were petted 
and flattered by Rome, when she herself began to look for 
an ancient descent. 

If then we take the Segestans at this old valuation, we 
can at least understand such works as this Temple and the 
Theatre ; for what we know of Troy leads us to consider 
her as at least the equal of the Greeks in civilization and 
culture. And if the Segestans were isolated, at least they 
had thus a tradition as lofty as the Greeks, and were 
able to find among the Greeks a common civilization if 
not a common policy. There can indeed be no doubt 
that this was so: for it is not only their monuments which 
attest it, but, much more significantly, their coins also: 
these bear Greek inscriptions and the unquestionable 
character of Greek art. 

But if this be so, it must be remembered, too, that we 
never hear of Segesta i in all its history except as the enemy 
of the Greek cities of Sicily. She is first mentioned in 
580 B.c.—as early as that—as in dispute with Selinus. It 
was another dispute with Selinus which was the origin 


170 CITIES OF SICILY 


of the Athenian Expedition, and following that disaster, we 
find her constantly in league with the Carthaginians, the 4 
relentless enemies of everything Greek. ; 
In 397 B.C., when Dionysius of Syracuse launched hiss 
great effort against the Carthaginians in Sicily, he laid 
siege to Segesta and the city was only saved by the landing ~ 
of Himilco. But though she escaped, she could never be 
at peace with the Greek, and when in 307 B.c. Agathocles — 


on his return from Africa was received into Segesta as an 


ally, they were unable to stomach it, and their disaffection 4 


caused him to turn upon them and put the whole city to — 
slaughter, over 10,000 being put to the sword, their women 


and children sold into slavery, and the very name of the . 
city changed to Dicaeopolis. . 

Segesta in some sort recovered from this blow and resumed | 4 
its name, but its real character seems to have been lost, — 
for we find it joining Pyrrhus on his expedition into Car- 4 
thaginian Sicily, and it presently fell altogether into the © 
hands of Carthage. At the opening of the First Punic — 
War it seems to have recognized its affinity with Rome, — 
for it joined that cause, as soon as it was able, and put the © 
Carthaginian garrison to the sword. Rome in consequence ~ 
favoured Segesta and exempted it from all taxation. 5 

Of its position under the Roman administration we get — 
some idea from Cicero. : 

““Segesta,” he says, “is a very ancient town in Sicily — 
which its inhabitants assert was founded by A2neas when ~ 
he was flying from Troy and coming to this country. — 
Accordingly the Segestans think that they are connected ~ 
with the Roman people, not only by perpetual alliance — 
and friendship but even by some relationship. Now — 
when Segesta was at war with the Carthaginians it was © 
sacked, and everything which could be an ornament to — 
the city was transported from thence to Carthage. There — 
was among the Segestans a statue of Diana, of bronze, not 
only most sacred, but wrought with the most exquisite 
skill and beauty. On account of its beauty it seemed ~ 
even to their enemies worthy of being worshipped. Some 
ages afterwards, Publius Scipio took Carthage in the Third — 
Punic War ; after the victory the same Diana was restored — 





SEGESTA 171 


with the greatest care to the Segestans. It is taken back 
to Segesta; it is replaced in its ancient situation, to the 
greatest joy and delight of all the citizens. 

“It was placed at Segesta on a lofty pedestal on which 
were cut in great letters the name of Publius Africanus ; 
and a statement was also engraved that ‘ he had restored 
it after taking Carthage.’ It was worshipped by the 
citizens; it was visited by all strangers; when I was 
questor it was the very first thing they showed me. It 
was very large and tall with a flowing robe, and in spite 
of its size it gave the idea of the age and dress of a virgin ; 
her arrows hung from her shoulder, in her left hand she 
carried her bow, and her right hand held a burning torch. 

“Now when Verres, the enemy of all sacred things, the 
violator of all religious scruples, saw it, he began to burn 
with covetousness and insanity. He commands the magis- 
trates to take down the statue and give it to him, and 
declares to them that nothing could be more agreeable 
to him. 

“ But they said that it was impossible for them to doso ; 
that they were prevented not only by their religion but 
by their respect for the laws and the courts of justice. 
Then he began to entreat, to threaten, to excite their 
hopes and arouse their fears. 

“They opposed to his desires the name of Africanus. 
They said it was the gift of the Roman people. Itisrefused. 

** Afterwards, whatever burdens he could impose in respect 
of exacting rowers, or in levying corn, he laid upon Segesta 
beyond all other cities, and a good deal more than it could 
bear. He harried the Segestans individually up and down 
the land, and threatened each one to ruin him, and to 
them all in a body he announced the ruin of their city. 

“Therefore the Segestans, subdued by ill-treatment and 
by fear, resolved to obey his command. With great grief 
and lamentation on the part of the whole city, with many 
tears and wailings on the part of all men and women, a 
contract is advertised for taking down the statue of Diana. 

“‘See now and know, O judges, that among all the Sege- 
stans none was found, whether free-man or slave, whether 
citizen or foreigner, to dare to touch the statue. 


172 CITIES OF SICILY 
























‘« Some Barbarian workmen were brought from Lilybeum, 
They at length, ignorant of the whole business and of the — 
religious character of the image, agreed to take it down for — 
a sum of money, and took it down. ie: 

‘“ Then, as it was being taken down, how great was the 
concourse of women, how great was the weeping of the — 
old men, some of whom even recollected that day when _ 
that same Diana was brought back to Segesta from Car- 
thage, and had announced to them by its return the victory _ 
of the Roman People. How different from that time did — 
this day seem! . = 

“ What is more notorious throughout all Sicily than that 
all the matrons and virgins of Segesta came together 
when Diana was being taken out of their city; that they — 
anointed her with precious unguents, that they crowned & 
her with chaplets and flowers; that they attended beta 4 


burning perfumes... ve 
‘‘ And when this crime had been executed, as the vedestail Bi 

was empty but the name of Publius Africanus stood upon — 

it, in fear of scandal he took away the pedestal also. : 
“Now, O Publius Scipio, I appeal to you... .” 


That glorious rhetoric which first bewildered, and thea a 
stirred as with a trumpet, the days of my boyhood, seems 
here in this very place and to-day to make these hills ‘ 
echo with that glorious name. a 

But where stood that statue, in what sanctuary or forum, i 
upon the hill of the Theatre or the hill of the Temple? > 
Its very situation is lost to us, and even the rumour of 
its beauty has died away among the echoes of these savage — 
cliffs. By what road did it enter with rejoicing, by what — 
gate did it pass with its unguents and flowers when it was” 
borne away and only the empty pedestal bearing that 
Cageetubisis name, resounding over Africa, remained. | ; 

- Only the Temple stands, empty, roofless, grass-grown, a 
portico of columns, a harp for the wind. : 

It is a Doric peripteros-hexastylos of thirty-six colmmil ‘ 
dating from the fifth century B.c., but seems never to have 
been finished. The columns are unfluted, the basement 


SEGESTA 1738 


incomplete, the cella never begun. It is 200 feet long by 
85 feet wide and its columns are 29 feet high with the 
capitals, and 6 feet in diameter at the base. In colour it 
is a golden cream full of light. 

It is a beautiful mystery. Why it was never completed 
we do not know, but it remains even in this inhospitable 
place the best preserved temple in Sicily, and its simple 
and majestic presence among these bare mountains is 
overwhelming. Artemis herself were not more austere. 

I could scarce drag myself away from this spot so full 
of the tragedy and the beauty of the past. But the 
afternoon was drawing to a close, already the sun was 
sinking upon the mountains, the shadows of those wild 
peaks were growing longer and longer, the air was full of 
gold; upon all that far stretched landscape the beauty and 
benediction of evening were beginning to fall. 

The peasants were eager to depart, they feared to be 
overtaken, it seemed, in such a place, by the twilight at 
the end of the day. The valley was malarious and it was 
as much as my life was worth, so they explained, to remain 
at nightfall among these hills. 

So I dragged myself away, though over the Temple the 
new moon was setting, and out of the great ravines the 
vast shadows of darkness were already stretching forth 
their hands upon Temple and peak and rude mountain 
side. The flowers had closed their blossoms, the sheep 
were already folded in some cave for the night, the lamp 
was already lit in the house of the custode.. 

I turned away, and slowly upon Beppina, the white 
mule, I rode down the rough descent. 

Had I but known it, it was to Greek Sicily I had said 
farewell in the twilight there among the hills. 


CHAPTER XIII 
PALERMO 


SUPPOSE Palermo, the great Bay of Palermo with its 
lofty promontories thrust out into the sea, so noble in 
outline and in mass, Monte Pellegrino on the west, 


and Monte Alfano on the east, the city set as it were in 


a natural amphitheatre between them on the shore of the 
blue jewel-like sea, its palaces and turrets and minarets 





seen against the dark background of far flung mountain, — 


and surrounded by the richest of all vales, the Conca d’Oro, 


running up in an ever narrowing valley into the great bare 4 


hills, with its olive gardens, its orange and lemon groves, 


its fig trees and almonds, its palms and agaves and its id 


infinite flowers: I suppose Palermo is one of the loveliest 


places in the world. | 
And yet, look at it as you lie outside the great bay, 


tossing in a barca, maybe, through a whole afternoon; or % 


better, as you come in from the large on a great ship at = 


dawn ; and lovely though it is you will have to admit that 


it cannot compare with the Bay of Naples, with its far 
stretched headlands, its lovely citadel height of S. Elmo, 


its sentinel island of Capri and, above all, the exquisite % 


outline and colour of its volcano Vesuvius. 


Palermo, the Bay of Palermo, has not the character or 
the variety of the Bay of Naples, has nothing of its large 
serene and classic beauty. Its loveliness is at once more 
harsh, as in those mountains, more Oriental, as in those © 
minarets and domes among the palms. Those two beauti- — 


ful but fantastic headlands are not the portal, you feel, to 


any quiet European city: it is as though between them 
you were drawn into the enchanted world of some Arabian ~ 


174 





PALERMO 175 


romance, fair and languorous and cruel, where all the 
women are veiled and all the swords are curved, where the 
voices are harsh but the footsteps softer than silk, where 
in the deep shade of the gardens under the moon all 
night long to the splash of the fountains the nightingale 
sings. 

Much the same impression awaits you in the city itself : 
that fantastic architecture at once cold and hysterical which 
meets you everywhere in those curiously untidy streets 
may have been built, but was certainly not conceived, by 
a really European people. Those famous churches with 
their minarets and domes, their ceilings of honeycomb, 
their coloured tiles, their golden walls, their marvellous 
multicoloured mosaics—these are no Christian sanctuaries, 
they were never built for One who was Crucified; they . 
presuppose Mohammed’s paradise, and their cloisters are 
gardens of love hung with sweet smelling flowers and golden 
rosesandred. Those palaces of brick or yellow stone whose 
curved walls are covered with fantastic lacework, whose 
windows all look within, whose patios and inner courts 
are filled with the noise of fountains and the scent of flowers, 
they must have been ours by capture for they presuppose 
the eunuch and the gyneceum; and those gardens half 
lost in the deep shade, with their palms, their bamboos 
and bananas, their sweet spices, their cinnamon, nutmeg, 
and ginger, their papyrus and coffee trees, their tangle of 
brilliant flowers, they are the oases of the desert-and have 
nothing to say to us that we can understand. 

This impression, so insistent as in the summer heat one 
wanders aimlessly about this curiously confused city, at 
once so noisy and so silent, is borne out in the streets, 
where each vast piazza is a desert of dust wholly subject to 
the intolerant sun, and each street an alleyway in a 
bazaar, fantastic with stuffs and gaudy wares, with bright 
curtains and awnings and blinds, beyond which the sun 
has smitten everything into a uniform silence and stillness. 
How full those streets are, how slowly, how languorously 
the city moves, and yet always it might seem with the 
expectation of violence ! 

Linger at night on the seething Marina where there is 


176 CITIES OF SICILY 


music, watch the amazing spectacle in all its extraordinary 
noise and confusion, its half suppressed animalism under 
the great summer stars beside that placid sea. Watch 
them all, men, women, children, with their air of exhausted 
delight, eyeing one another, appraising one another, chat- 
tering and gesticulating, eating gelati of all shapes and 
colours before the innumerable booths, drinking violent 
coloured syrups or sipping sherbet, while under the full 
moon across the shallow harbour pass the little ships of the 
Orient, their tall lateen sails like the wings of great birds 
floating in the silvery darkness. 

Or pass into that strange Cathedral that has suffered 
every sort of violation and seek the tombs of the masters, 
of the kings, here in their capital. Those vast sarcophagi 
of porphyry under their canopies borne on columns of por- 
phyry can never have been hewn by any Christian hands 
for any Christian burial. They are as defiant of time and 
eternity as the Pyramids: the dead, whose indestructible 
home they are, look for no resurrection, their bodies anointed 
with unguents and swathed in infinite tissues of purple 
and gold and loaded with all the ornaments of the East, 
will never return to dust, hidden and locked as they are 
in their fortressed chambers of porphyry, against which 
even the Trumpet of the Resurrection will echo in vain. 

For the conquerors were conquered: the victor became 
the victim. How could the winds and orchards of Nor- 
mandy but falter and wither in this air full of perfumes 
and spices under the pitiless sun ? 

Yes; for all that Byzantium might attempt, for all that 
Normandy could do, Palermo remains Oriental still, 
Phoenician, Saracen, a city of Asia which has consumed 
conqueror after conqueror, absorbed them all one after 
another into her dark soul and pulled the flower of their 
spirit to pieces with her cunning delicate fingers, petal by 
petal. Byzantine, Norman, German, French and Spaniard 
are as chaff before the subtle wind of her spirit : she absorbs 
them all one after another, converts their souls to her soul, 
and returns to her origins. 

And just that is in fact her history. Sicily, the very 


nodal point of the Mediterranean world, was always in — 








PALERMO SEA FRONT 


PALERMO 177 


dispute between Greek and Semite, between Europe and 
Asia—Asia which had spread over North Africa. Well, 
here in Palermo Asia has won. She went down before 
each European conqueror as he came, but in her defeat she 
conquered, she enraptured, she enchanted his soul. Ina 
few years after his victory he scarcely remained European, 
was scarcely any longer a Christian, her subtle and profound 
learning enthralled him, her exquisite art bewitched him, 
her fatal philosophy absorbed him, the secret of her spirit, 
her odalisques, her children, her gardens enclosed, her 
infinite languor enslaved him: he washers. Here you may 
see what he built, read what he wrote, know what he 
thought, see how he lived, learn how he died. He was 
hers. Here even the persistent and tragic soul of Spain 
loses itself, its identity, becomes insane. 

The Saracen conquest, preluded as it was by many a 
raid from Syria, began in earnest, and from Africa in 827 
at Mazzara, upon the old frontier between Greek and 
Phoenician. It continued for 138 years. It began very 
slowly, but in 830 new forces arrived from Spain, and 
Panormus, Palermo that is, fell into the hands of the 
Mohammedans and remained there till the advent of Roger 
the Norman two hundred and thirty years later. The 
great struggle thus begun goes on, with Syracuse as the 
champion of Europe. Palermo was now established as the 
Mohammedan capital, the seat of the Emir, and slowly 
Sicily becomes an Aghlabite principality, owing a formal 
allegiance to Kairawan. The island is divided into “ val- 
lies ’’—the most -firmly held of which is Val di Mazzara 
in the west, which corresponds largely with Carthaginian 
Sicily, Val di Noto in the south-east, and, the most precar- 
ious, Val Demone in the north-east. It takes ten years to 
secure Val di Noto, and in the meantime Messina falls. 
In 859 the central fortress Enna (Castrogiovanni) is taken, 
and this proves to be the key to Val di Noto. Syracuse 
still holds out however. Then in 875 Ibrahim ibn Ahmad 
ascends the throne in Africa; the Emir Ja’far ibn Ahmad 
in Palermo is ordered to press on. The siege of Syracuse 
is begun in 877 and in the following year the Greek city 
passes for the first time into non-European hands. In 


178 CITIES OF SICILY 


895 Sicily is really wholly lost to the Greeks by a treaty — 
signed by the Saracens and the remaining Christian towns. 
There remained Val Demone without Messina; but with 


the fall of Taormina and Rametta in 908 the conquest is 


largely complete, though insecure, for these fortresses are — 


retaken and only finally pass to the Mohammedans in 965. 
The whole island was then in Saracen hands, a province 
of Mohammed. 





Yet even so I often think, we fared better at the hands 


of these Saracens than they would have done then at ours, 
For the Christians enjoyed some toleration. To a certain 
extent liberty was accorded them. Only those found in 


arms were reduced to slavery. And it would be impossible — 
to deny that from the point of view of material prosperity — 


the Saracen domination was beneficial to Sicily: much 
more beneficial possibly than the Roman had been. In 
agriculture for instance great advances were made in won- 
derful new systems of irrigation, and new plants such as 
the sugar-cane, the cotton-tree, the mulberry and the 


quince were introduced. And the Saracens built too: 


Palermo is said to have possessed 300 mosques; and 


literature flourished exceedingly. In the middle of the A 
tenth century a census was taken and there proved to be ~ 


in the island a population of 2,807,000 of whom 1,590,000 


were Mussulmans. An admirable system of adminis- 


tration and taxation was established which was inherited 


by the Norman conquerors. 


Nevertheless the hope of the reconquest of Sicily was 4 
never given up by Byzantium. In 1027 a great army had 
been assembled for this purpose, but Basil II died before ~ 


it sailed. Then in 1038 George Maniaces, the great soldier 
of his time, was sent by Byzantium and delivered many ~ 


towns including Messina and Syracuse, and indeed is said — 


to have reconquered the whole island excepting Palermo, — 


But after the recall of Maniaces all, except Messina, was — 


soon lost. 


Now in those Byzantine armies were men of many 
nations, and among them three young men, the elder sons ~ 
of an old knight named Tancred de Hauteville living at — 
Coutances in Normandy. He had followed Robert, Duke — 





PALERMO 179 


of Normandy, the father of William the Conqueror. This 
old knight lived in his castle of Hauteville surrounded by 
his family of twelve sons. Too poor to leave each a patri- 
mony worthy of his birth he had encouraged three of them 
to seek their fortunes in the south. They and their 
Normans had borne the brunt of the Sicilian campaign, 
the eldest, William of the Iron Arm, killing the Saracen: 
chief with his own hand, but when they claimed their 
share of the spoil they were refused. They therefore crossed 
the Strait of Messina and fell on Apulia, then a Byzantine 
province. To their standard flocked every discontented 
interest in the south, Ardoin and the Lombards and their 
own countrymen of Aversa, those in the service of Salerno 
and of Monte Cassino. They were successful. 

From time to time the other sons of old Tancred joined 
their brothers in southern Italy, Robert Guiscard in 1047 
and the youngest Roger ten years later. 

Roger, the “‘ flower of the flock,” was then twenty-six 
yearsold. ‘‘ He wasa youth,’ the old Chronicler Malaterra 
tells us, ‘‘ of the greatest beauty, of lofty stature, of graceful 
shape, most eloquent in speech and cool in counsel. He 
was far-seeing in arranging all his actions, pleasant and 
metry with all men, strong and brave and furious in battle.” 
He shared with Robert Guiscard the conquest of Calabria 
and proved his genius. In 1060 the two brothers decided 
to conquer Sicily. In the May of that year they crossed 
from Reggio and took Messina, which became thus their 
point d’appui and capital. Everywhere they were expected 
and welcomed by the Christians. After ten years of 
fighting and intrigue Roger laid siege to Palermo which, 
with his brothers’ help, he took in 1071. 

The conquest went on. Taormina was taken in 1078, 
Syracuse in 1085, Girgenti and Castrogiovanni, the latter 
by reason of the conversion of its chief, in 1086, Noto in 
togo. The whole island was thus reconquered in thirty 
patient years of fighting—a whole generation. In 1098 the 
Papacy granted to Roger (now Count), and his heirs the 
office of Apostolic Legate in Sicily. 

Thus was established the most strange, the most success- 

- ful and the most brilliant administration that Sicily had 


180 CITIES OF SICILY 





seen since the decline of the Greek cities. The Normansin — 
fact had acquired a state in being, wealthy, ably adminis- — 
tered, and possessed of a far higher culture, not only than « 
their own, but than that of any other country in Europe. — 
They were unwilling to destroy all this, they sought rather 
to win and to enjoy it. They thus became its heirs. The 
Mohammedan religion was everywhere tolerated, but—and - 
in this too they only imitated the Moslem rule—conversions © 
from Christianity to Islam were prohibited. Nor in fact ~ 
were conversions from Islam to Christ enthusiastically 
encouraged, perhaps because Roger largely depended upon, 4 
and certainly used, Mohammedan troops, and these were 3 
obviously more uniform and manageable, and probably ~ 
more trustworthy, unconverted. ; 
So the two creeds flourished side by side. The Saracens ; 
in the towns had their own quarters, mosques and schools, : 
and at Palermo they were secured in the complete enjoy- — 
ment of their own lands administered by their own officials. — 
In Girgenti they seem to have really possessed the whole — 
city, but Messina and the whole Val di Noto was mainly — 
Christian. In the western part of the island and in the — 
capital things were much the same as under the Saracen | 





government: indeed we read that French and Italian 
women who had come in with the conquest adopted the 
Oriental fashion of dress—a capital fact; and certainly 
the administration was conducted on Oriental principles. — 
It could not be otherwise since Roger practically took a 
the whole machine, both court and administrative. 
regard to taxation, for instance, he found a machinery ia 7 
excellent working order to his hand, officials well acquainted — 
with resources, accounts, books, schedules, most complete, ~ 
accurate and in order. He adopted this bureaucracy and — 
it made him the richest monarch in Europe. His edicts — 
ran in Arabic as well as in Greek and Latin: his coins 
and money were stamped with Cuphic characters, his very 
jewels bore Semitic inscriptions. | 
In regard to his Court too, Roger adopted all the custom > 
and ritual of an Eastern potentate. In outward appear- 
ance it might have been the Court of the King of Persia. 
All was hung and all were clad in the silks woven on Arabian 









PALERMO 181 


looms here, by Theban and Corinthian slaves. Viziers, 
chamberlains, ushers, pages, masters of the wardrobe, and 
all the innumerable paraphernalia of an Eastern Court 
were continued, and with this result, that at Palermo 
Europe beheld for the first time a Court of lofty culture and 
artificial manners ; full, of course, of intrigue, but a society 
carefully maintained, in which men of letters, scholars, 
poets, philosophers, astronomers and the mysterious 
students of natural science were not only welcome but in 
some sort set the key and maintained the tone of this 
society. Here in Palermo Ptolemy’s Optics were trans- 
lated from Arabic into Latin: the Prophecies of the Eryth- 
rean Sibyl were also made accessible, and in one of the 
mosques Roger found the relics of Aristotle suspended like 
the precious relics of a saint might be in a Christian church. 
Roger himself pen in hand assisted in the compilation of a 
work on Universal Geography and in the construction of a 
map of the world, assisted by twelve geographers, Christian 
and Mussulman, and had it engraved upon a silver disk ; 
and Jewish physicians served and Arabian poets immortal- 
ized him. 3 
The Court, all that was most living and most brilliant 
in Palermo and in Sicily, whiled away its leisure among 
languorous odalisques, monstrous eunuchs and graceful 
Persian boys in the wonderful gardens and villas which 
Saracen art and Saracen craft built for the pleasure of the 
new masters: villas of an ineffable delight, through whose 
fretted courts many fountains flowed, whose gardens were 
paradises of love amid the deep shade of orange-groves, 
of whispering palms and cool myrtles, where birds tuned 
their tender notes among a tangle of scarlet passion flowers, 
of pools in which bright fishes swam under perfumed lilies, 
and the branches of blossoming trees leaned down to smile 
at them. 
Great churches arose, but rather mosques than churches, 
- under clustering minarets and turrets and encrusted with 
marvellous Byzantine mosaics of all colours, glistening in 
a semi-darkness, a cool shadow and sheen and glimmer of 
gold, beneath roofs of exquisite carved honeycomb with 
long pendentives dripping from the golden multi-coloured 
13 


182 CITIES OF SICILY 


roof, the walls carved with Cuphic legends, and inset $ 


actually founded by Roger. The Pope, Urban II, visited — 


with gems or enamelled tiles still more brilliant, and 
lovelier. 

Three civilizations, three religions, here met and i 
to have dissolved one into another without disaster. 
Palermo a Greek Bishop was first restored, but he wal 
succeeded by Latins who were also established in every see 


Sicily and seeing the state of affairs and hoping for a Latin 


victory, granted to Count Roger special ecclesiastical — 
powers, appointed him and his successors hereditary — 
legates of the Holy See. Greek ritual however continued — 


and still lingered in Messina till the fifteenth century. 


Three languages were current—the Greek, the Latin and — 


in Europe where men of different faiths and different — 
tongues might live together in peace side by side, trusted ~ 
and favoured according to their individual deserts. So & 


the Arabic: the Court language was French. In the event 
Latin in the form of the Italian dialect was to win, but till 
the end of the twelfth century Sicily was the one country ~ 


happy a state of affairs, as we should certainly regard it 


from our point of view to-day, could not endure: while it © 
lasted it was most brilliant, but it was short lived. It © 
was in fact the happy negation of the barbarism we call — 
nationalism. There was not—there never has been—a — 
Silician nation. Till yesterday this was also true of Italy © 


and made of her the mother of us all. 


Roger the great Count died in 1101; he was succeeded ~ 
for a moment by his son Simon, but in 1105 Roger the 
First ascended the throne as King of Sicily. This man — 
came also into the Norman dominion in southern Italy, © 
and thus founded the kingdom our fathers knew as the 
Two Sicilies, comprising about one-third of Italy and by © 
far the most stable dominion within it. This kingdom — 


was established as a fief of the Holy See. 


Roger I died in 1154 and was succeeded by his son William F 
the Bad, who reigned till 1166, when he was succeeded by 


his son William the Good (1166-89.) 


With William the Good the best of that too brilliant day — 
was over. He had no children and tried to obtain the 





PALERMO 183 


- succession of his aunt Constance, wife of Henry VI of 
Germany, son of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. But 
he failed, and on his death the crown passed to Tancred the 
illegitimate grandson of King Roger I. Tancred died in 
I194 and was succeeded by his youthful son William IIT. 
Then came the Emperor Henry VI and conquered Sicily 
and Norman Italy with a bestial cruelty that, as his son 
and Constance’s, Frederick II, was to prove, seems to have 
been inherent in that blood. 

Frederick—Stupor Mundi—was crowned in Palermo in 
r198. He was then four years old and under the protection 
of Pope Innocent III. During his minority Sicily suffered 
from every sort of anarchy and his frequent absences in 
his manhood led to a major change in the character of the 
island, for the Saracen revolt of 1243 led to a removal of 
many of the Saracen population to Lucera. The Greek 
element too was in decline and under Frederick—one might 
almost say in spite of Frederick, for Sicily was his best 
beloved country, he spoke all its three tongues and was 
certainly not unsympathetic to Islam, was indeed known 
as the Sultan of Lucera—the Italian culture, language, 
influence and population increased and dominated the whole 
island. Italian became the speech of the court of Sicily 
and largely through Frederick’s own genius it became the 
language of a new literature, born in Sicily, in Palermo, 
which was to develop into the Italian of Dante and Boc- 
caccio. 

On Frederick’s death in 1250 his son Conrad, his grandson 
Conradin ascend the throne ; but behind them both lurks 
the beautiful tragic figure of Manfred, Frederick’s illegi- 
timate heir. In 1258 Manfred, on the rumour, false as it 
proved, of the death of Conradin is crowned king in Palermo. 
There followed a universal chaos, in which the Pope, the 
cities themselves, the various royal interests, all struggle 
for mastery and out of which Manfred emerges momen- 
tarily victorious. 

Finally the enmity and the envy of the Pope were too 
much for him. The Papacy as overlord sold the Silician 
crown to the highest bidders and finally Urban IV granted 
it to Charles of Anjou, who could be trusted, he thought, 


184 CITIES OF SICILY 






to do what the Holy See decreed and hold Sicily unquestion- | 4 
ably from the Papacy. 4 

Charles was crowned by the Pope in 1266, broke Manfred — *» 
at Benevento, established himself at Naples and held Sicily _ 
as a province of his new kingdom. The whole island 
revolted and was degraded, oppressed and enslaved. For — 
sixteen years Charles was able with the help of the Papacy 
to maintain this cruel folly ; revolt was followed by per- — 
secution and appalling suppression ; the island ran with ~ 
blood ; till out of the chaos rose up the daggers of the — 
Sicilian Vespers, following on an insult offered to a Sicilian 
woman in Palermo, and it is said not a single Frenchman ~ 
was left alive in the island. cf 

Sicily appealed to the Pope, who supported the Angevin 
and blessed the cruel fool who had lost his kingdom. § 

Manfred had a daughter, Constance, now Queen of Peter, — 
King of Aragon. He watched and waited, till, when ~ 
Charles was besieging Messina, a parliament at Palermo ~ 
was persuaded to choose him for king, and a struggle of — 
twenty years began between Anjou and Aragon in which ~ 
finally and after many curious adventures Aragon was — 
triumphant in 1295. 3 

Thus upon the amazing palimpsest of Sicanian, Sike- — 
lian, Phoenician, Greek, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, — 
Saracen and Norman, the cold indifferent arrogance of © 
Spain is imposed at last—to endure—to endure in a sort — 
of death until Garibaldi in our fathers’ time awakened the ~ 
island from its frozen silence with the shouts of his Thousand _ 
—Viva Italia. 4 

For all that, Sicily remains to-day something outside — 
Italy—outside the Italian tradition. Who thinks of Italy — 
in Syracuse or Girgenti? Who could think of anything © 
there but of Greece. In Palermo certainly the Greeks are © 
as absent as the Normans, but it is not of Italy you think, — 
but every hour of the day in monastery, church or Cathedral, — 
in the Palace Palatine, as in the half vanished loveliness of — 
La Favara, La Cuba, La Zisa, in the moonlight on the — 
Marina as in those burning streets, it is the orient you — 
discern ; and you hear—or overhear is it ?—that Arabian 
tale, that rhythmic air, which whether in Syria or in Africa, — 


PALERMO 185 


in Spain or here in Sicily tells the same story over and over 
again, under the minarets of San Cataldo, in the cloister of 
San Giovanni, in the Cathedral of Cordova, on the hill of 
the Alhambra, in the mosques of Damascus or the streets 
of Kairawan. 


II 


So the history of Palermo, that so strange story, is 
perhaps more clearly written in its buildings than is that 
of any other city in Europe. There we see how that 
amazing Norman dynasty by sheer political genius became 
the real national House of Sicily; and at what a cost. 
We may discern there how it was able during more than a 
century to contrive the most refined, the most charming 
and the most original civilization which had existed in 
Europe since the failure of the Western Empire; and we 
find there too in those strange Arab buildings so lavishly 
decorated by the art of Byzantium, in which, so often, 
scarcely anything Norman appears at all, the price and 
the cost of it all, the almost complete suppression or at 
least the transformation of the soul and the art of the 
conqueror, that soul and that art which elsewhere proved 
so dominant, in England for instance where in spite of the 
notoriously stubborn national character and long tradition, 
within two generations of the Conquest, the whole country 
was covered with vast and essentially Norman buildings, in 
which not a trace of the art of the conquered can be dis- 
cerned. 

No doubt in the midst of a civilization so much superior 
to their own, their genius was to use and conserve it; 
but there is this too: it was probably as much by taste 
as by policy that the conquerors lost themselves in the 
civilization, the learning and the art, that they found in 
Sicily. Roger I certainly and the two Williams lived like 
veritable Eastern princes. Surrounded by Greek and Arab 
dignitaries of the palace, their whole administration and 
bureaucracy using indifferently Arabic, Greek or Latin, 
their money imitated from the coins of Byzantium and 


186 CITIES OF SICILY 





bearing Arabic inscriptions, their army consisting of 10,000 
Mussulmans, their fleet full of Syrians and commanded by — 
Greeks, little by little they were overwhelmed by it all. 

And then in this conquest of the conquerors no doubt ~ 
the exquisite climate had its part. Those Norman kings — 
dressed like orientals, their guards were negroes or Arabs, — 
their chamberlains, their pages, their cooks, Saracens, 
eunuchs guarded their harems where Greek and Arab 
women wove the lovely silks through the interminable 
hours: the very names of their villas, their castles of 


kd dial 


indolence or of pleasure, amid eastern gardens of delight, 
bore oriental names—Sweet Waters or Paradise of Earth ef 
or The Glory. Palermo came soon to equal the splendour 
of Cordoba or Granada. - 

What had that stark and immovable Norman architec- __ 
ture, what we see still at Jumiéges for instance or at 
Durham, to do with all this? Here and there indeed a 
church was built such as they knew at home, at Monreale 
and even more definitely characteristic at Cefalu, but 


they were only built to be overwhelmed by Saracen carvings — 
and Byzantine mosaics, to be in fact completely orientalisted, _ 
till, save for their indestructible outline, they are unrecog- 
nizable, caught as they are in that oriental enchantment, 
and transformed out of all recognition. They might ~ 
indeed be symbols of their Norman builders who sat 
enthroned arrayed in oriental vestments adorned with 
rude jewels bearing Cuphic inscriptions, no longer mere 
kings but priests, like the sacerdotal monarchs of the East, _ 
and at last scarcely European. | 
Isuppose the only strictly Saracen building left in Palermo 
is the base of the great tower of the Cathedral which forms _ 
part of the Archbishop’s Palace; this is said to date from 
Arabic times. But the Cathedral itself built by Walter — 
‘“‘of the Mill,” the English Archbishop, for William the 
Good in 1170, is, in spite of its continuous restorations — 
belonging to every century since its foundation, an excel- 
lent example of the overwhelming influence of Saracen — 
civilization and art after the Norman conquest. 
The lovely building in golden stone with its four towers __ 
as graceful as the Giralda of Seville, has to-day half lost 


















PALERMO 


) 


ATHEDRAL 





sd ale 
’ 


ee om 








PALERMO 187 


its unique character, by reason of the dome which Fuga built 
over it in the eighteenth century, when he ruined the 
interior with plaster in a vain attempt to make of it a 
Spanish church. But note that lovely south porch; 
it is purely Arab in feeling, note the fretwork and carving 
everywhere, the beautiful arcading: this is no Norman 
building, no Spanish church, but the creation of the same 
mind which built the mosque of Cordova, the same hands 
which contrived the beauty of the Alhambra and the strange 
ambiguous churches of Toledo. To find the Norman you 
must go into the crypt where among others the English 
Archbishop under whom the church was built, Gualterio 
“ Offamilla ” they call him, lies.1 You will not find it in 
the chapel of the Kings in the south aisle of the great church, 
where in sumptuous porphyry such as neither the Dukes 
of Normandy nor the Kings of England ever knew, lie 
under their canopies, King Roger I, his daughter Constance, 


1 Gualterio Offamilla—Walter “‘of the Mill,” Archbishop of 
Palermo, primate and chancellor of Sicily, was sent to Sicily as 
tutor for William the Good when a boy by Henry II of England. 
Henry expected to marry his daughter Johanna to William. Walter 
became Archbishop and was succeeded as tutor by Peter of Blois. 
But Walter was first Archdeacon of Cefali and Dean of Girgenti. 
His appointment to the See of Palermo was violently opposed by 
the French, headed by the Queen Mother and Matthew the Vice- 
Chancellor, but was most favourably received by the Pope, Alex- 
ander III. Matthew’s party finally succeeded in carving the Arch- 
bishopric of Monreale out of the diocese of Palermo in 1188. Walter 
held the See of Palermo for twenty-five years (1168-93). He is 
buried in the crypt, his sarcophagus bearing the following in- 
scription : 


CONDIDIT ACTORIS DOMVS HEC SVB MARMORE CORPVS 
NE SIT GVALTERIO FVNDITVS ORBA SVO. 

HIC JACET ANTISTES GVALTERIVS AVCTOR OVILIS 
XRISTE, TVI FACTVS QUOD FVIT ANTE LINIS. 
VIRGINIS EXEMPLO MAIOREM TVMBVLA TEMPLO 
CLAVDIT, GVALTERII DVM FOVET OSSA PII 
SVNT DVO LVSTRA MINVS ANNIS DE MILLE DVCENTIS 
CVM CLAVDIT TANTVM TAM BREVIS ARCA VIRVM, 


The name Walter “of the Mill ’’—Offamilla—is said to be a 
barbarous transformation of Gualterius ad gdamiridpis—proto famili- 
avis that is; the a signifying his position as the first among the 
familiares of the Norman King. 


188 CITIES OF SICILY 
































Henry VI her husband and the Emperor Frederic II— 
Stupor Mundi. When in the eighteenth century those o 
sarcophagi were opened they found the body of Frederick 
whole and entire, arrayed in gorgeous robes covered with - 
inscriptions in Arabic, and beside him lay the crown, thelll 
orb, and that disastrous sword. He ‘ 

What else is to be seen in the church is of little interest : 
in the chapel to the left of that of the Kings a picture of 
S. Barbara with an angel by some North Italian master ; . 
in the second chapel of the north aisle an Assumption by 
Antonio Gagini, other parts of which are scattered about 
the church ; in the seventh chapel a statue of the Madonna 
by Francesco Laurana ; in the eighth chapel reliefs of the — 
Passion by Gagini. The choir stalls are of fine carved — 
work and here are statues of the apostles by Gagini. To ~ 
the right of the choir is the chapel of S. Rosalia, the patron 
saint of Palermo. Her relics lie here in a sarcophagus Ge ds a 
silver. In the sacristy you may see the Cap of Constance ~ 
of Aragon, wife of Frederick IT and a piece of the mantle x 
of Henry VI, taken from the great tomb in the Chapel of . 
the Kings. 

It is in the Cappella Palatina, the chapel of the Palace 4 
of the Norman kings, that one is first of all, and most over- 
whelmingly, confronted with the truth about Palermo, the ~ 
victory of its own civilization over its northern conquerors. — 
The Palace stands on a hill which has no doubt always ~ 
been the site of the castle, much of that we see to-day — 
dating from Saracen times. But it has been so added to © 
and restored not only by the Normans, whose only relic — 
there might seem to be the central tower, Torre Pisana or © 
S. Ninfa, that it is no longer of much interest. It isin the — 
Chapel built in 1132 by Roger and dedicated in honour - 
S. Peter that our interest lies. as 

The Cappella Palatina consists of a vestibule, a nave | 
with aisles, sanctuary and apse: but that vestibule now ~ 
spoiled was once part of a portico which surrounded the — 
whole chapel. We may still find seven of those many — 
columns and to the left an inscription, in Greek, in Arabic — 
and in Latin, regarding the erection, it is said, of a clock 
in I142. f 


5 


ir 
‘<a 
; 4 


PALERMO 189 


The nave, which is but roo feet in length and 42 feet 
- wide, is upheld by wonderful Saracen pointed arches borne 
by ten columns of cipollino and granite 16 feet high; it 
is covered by a beautiful stalactite Saracen vault of wood 
wonderfully carved and adorned with Cuphic inscriptions. 
The loftier sanctuary is reached by five steps beneath a 
dome having eight narrow windows and inscriptions in 
Greek and Latin. ‘fo the right is a tall ambone of marble, 
and a marble Paschal candelabrum. Andevery inch of the 
walls and the floor are covered with mosaics. Those which 
encrust the walls of nave and aisles and sanctuary and the 
cupola itself consist of glass cubes: the ground is all of 
gold and upon this as it were in an amazing radiance and 
_ oriental splendour in innumerable colours one sees pictures, 
subjects from the Old and New Testaments. The oldest 
are those of the choir, but all have been damaged by many 
successive repairs and those of the vestibule and the apse 
are modern. The whole effect is incomparably rich and 
gorgeous: the dimness of the light so sparingly admitted 
through the tiny windows aiding wonderfully, so that the 
whole chapel glows like a jewelled casket or a Limoges 
enamel. While these mosaics are, now certainly, inferior 
to those at Cefalt, the whole chapel is one of the loveliest 
and most fascinating works of art left in the world. And 
one visits it again and again, not indeed to study its details, 
but to enjoy its general effect, to lose oneself in that Arabian 
sanctuary, that coffer of carved marble encrusted with 
gold and precious stones. 

In the Sacristy which is reached through a bronze door 
of this time, are documents in Greek and Arabic and Latin ; 
and in a room to the left, which has a fine door of wrought 
iron, is the Treasury where one finds among other things an 
ivory casket of Saracen work. 

Before leaving the Palace, the Stanza di Ruggero, its 
walls also encrusted with mosaics, is worth some trouble 
to see, and the view from the flat roof of the tower, S. Ninfa, 
embraces the whole city and environs. 

From that magical Arabian sanctuary in the construction 
of which the Greek and the Saracen combined in the service 
of the Norman, whose character and art are altogether absent 


190 CITIES OF SICILY 


from it, one passes down to find a building not less astonish- 
ing, not less exotic, in the church—church or mosque is it ? 
—of S. Giovanni degli Eremiti. Here indeed one is in 
Arabia itself. Though built for the Norman kings as a 
church in 1132, it is in fact a mosque, a rectangular building 
in the shape of a tau-cross with three apses under five 
domes with its minaret and pointed arab windows. No- 
thing in Africa is more characteristic of the architecture of 
the Mussulman. Look at it from the delicious garden of 
the cloister. Those rose-coloured domes rising directly 
from the walls or from square substructures, that minaret 
crowned by its dome too, give one an ineffaceable impression 
of the orient and of Islam. No doubt Mass has-been said 
here for centuries, but even that great Rite was not able 
to change the atmosphere of this building which belonged 
to Islam as it were by birth, in spite of the intention of those 
who created it. That small mosque which ence stood upon 
this site and the remains of which you may still see, seems 
in it to live again. Here in this Islamic sanctuary were 
laid they say the nobles of the Norman court. Beside 
it opens the cloister, a garden of love overwhelmed with 
flowers, a fountain in the midst; still one of the loveliest 
things in Palermo. 

Close by is the Porto Mazzara, said to be the oldest gate 
now remaining in Palermo. Its narrow and lofty Saracen 
arch opens in the medieval wall. I am glad not to have 
missed it. 

Half bemused by these wonders, so strangely beautiful, 
one passes through the streets so silent and anon so thronged, 
to San Cataldo and La Martorana. 

In S. Cataldo one finds again what looks like a pure 
Saracen building, a rectangular mosque with apse and 
pointed Arabian windows under three domes, the central 
one supported by four ancient columns. They show you 
the altar there, but it cannot convince you that this was 
ever a Christian building. Yet in it certainly the Byzantine 
had his part for it was once covered with mosaics of which 
those of the pavement alone remain. It is said to date from 
r16z. It looks earlier. 

On the same platform as S, Cataldo stands the church 





PULPIT, CAPPELLA PALATINA, PALERMO 





S. GIOVANNI DEGLI EREMITI, PALERMO 








PALERMO 191 


of La Martorana, its many columned tower with its pointed 
windows the most Arabian thing about it, grouping well 
with the domes of S. Cataldo. Its original title was S. 
Maria dell’ Ammiraglio, for it was founded by that Byzan- 
tine admiral, Georgios Antiochenos, grand-admiral of King 
Roger in 1143. 

Here we seem to have come out of Arabia but still to 
remain in the orient. It is a Byzantine building without a 
thought of the Norman. It was originally square with 
three apses under a dome, but the nuns of the convent close 
by were given the church in the fifteenth century and they 
prolonged it westward. Again, in the seventeenth century, 
the central apse was pulled down and a square chapel took its 
place and in the eighteenth century the dome was removed. 

The whole interior was once covered with mosaics and 
those which remain, in spite of repairs and restorations, 
are to my mind far the finest in Palermo and fully equal to 
those at Cefali. The mosaics of the Birth of Christ, of 
the Birth of the Virgin and of her Death are quite without 
rivals in the Cappella Palatina or of course at Monreale. 
Here too is a valuable mosaic of the Coronation by Christ 
Himself of King Roger I. When all was perfect this 
Church must have been in its total effect as wonderful as 
the Palatine Chapel. In the vestibule are two columns 
bearing Arabic inscriptions together with two mosaics of 
King Roger and the admiral founder which come it is said 
from the original facade. 

These are the greatest and most interesting churches in 
Palermo, and to them should be added the Cathedral of 
Monreale. 

This great church, the seat of an archbishop, stands on 
the hills behind Palermo about three miles from the city. 
Nothing is left of the great Benedictine Monastery founded 
in 1174 by William the Good, except the famous cloisters, 
but the great church remains and around it has grown a 
town of 23,000 inhabitants. 

Of all the greater churches built in Palermo and its im- 
mediate neighbourhood for the Normans, this alone has much 
of their character. It is built in the form of a Latin cross 
with three apses 334 feet long and 131 feet wide. One might 


192 CITIES OF SICILY 







almost from without take it for a Norman building. The 
beautiful eastern apses with their dark arcading are as 
striking here as they are at Cefali, and the whole vast 
church with its two square towers at the western end stands 
up grey and dominating like a northern cathedral, but over a 
a landscape charged with marvels and in its gorgeous 
colouring unlike anything to be found in the north. The 
noble bronze doors too in their magnificent Norman portal © 
though not Norman are definitely Latin and European. — 
They are the work of Bonanno of Pisa who made the 
splendid bronze doors in the transept of the Duomo in his _ 
native city. They were erected in 1186. The bronze ~ 
doors at the side are less fine but date from about the same 
time. They are the work of Barisano of Trani. 
Within all is different. Here we are in a vast Latin © 
church it is true, but every yard of its 70,000 square feet is 
covered with Byzantine mosaics completed in 1182. In 
the nave, subjects from the Old Testament: in the aisles ~ 
and transepts scenes from the Life of Christ. On the ~ 
arches of the transept are scenes from the lives of SS. Peter 
and Paul, while in the Tribune we see the vast bust of Christ _ 
with an inscription in Greek and below the Madonna and ~ 
Child enthroned with angels and saints and below again ~ 
the Apostles. The spaces over the arch dividing the sanc- 
tuary from the minor tribune are adorned with figures of 
twelve prophets. An arch leading from the minor tribune ~ 
into the transept is decorated with a half figure of Christ and 
eight medallions of prophets. On the other face of the — 
arch is the Annunciation. In the archivaults in the centre 
of the church we see medallions of the progenitors of Christ. 
And over the arch dividing this vault from the nave is S. 
Sofia the Divine Wisdom of God, adored by the archangels _ 
S. Michael and S. Gabriel. Over the Royal Throne we see 
a curious and valuable scene: King William the founder 
receiving his crown directly from Christ without human 
intervention ; above the archiepiscopal Throne opposite, 
King William again presenting this church to the Blessed 
Virgin. In the right transept are the tombs of William 
the Bad and William the Good, the former a sarcophagus _ 
of porphyry like those in the Cathedral of Palermo.  _— 




















PALERMO 193 


These mosaics, almost overwhelming in their extent, are 
the poorest in Sicily, far below those at the Martorana 
and Cefalii and even less fine than those in the Cappella 
‘Palatina. They were intended to illustrate those portions 
of the Old Testament which prefigure the coming of the 
Messiah ; therefore they cease with the wrestling of Jacob. 
And further they represent the Life of Christ, the glory of 
the Redeemer and the triumph of the Church. The vast 
bust of the Saviour is inferior in type and form to that at 
Cefalu, far coarser in character and more wooden, nor are 
the harmonies of colour near so fine. These mosaics mark 
the decline of the art in Sicily. Note for instance the 
Crucifixion here in the Transept and compare it with the 
work of the older mosaicists. 

Wandering out of the church one comes into the marvel- 
lously lovely Cloister built by William for the monks he 
brought hither from La Cava to serve this church. These 
Cloisters are all that is left of the original building and they 
are the largest and I suppose the finest of their kind in 
existence, incredibly romantic too in the ruined beauty of 
their pointed arches and half destroyed mosaics, their 
Arabian fountain, their wonderfully ornamented shafts 
and capitals. They date from about 1200. A ruined wall 
of the monastery overshadows them upon the south. 

Beyond lies the delightful garden commanding a famous 
view over the Conca d’Oro and the city of Palermo and the 
sea. Here, as I at least never can do in the church itself, 
one may rest awhile and try to imagine what effect such 
a landscape as this must have had upon Count Roger after 
all his fighting and all his wars, what effect such a climate 
as this must have had upon the young Norman from 
Coutances, the harsh Norman fields, that Norman home. 
It must have seemed like fairyland: something too good 
to be true, a vision at noontide, a dream in the night, some- 
thing to which one could only surrender, only submit with 
secret delight. 

Is it there the explanation lies of all this strange business : 
so that in all this city of the Norman kings you look in 
vain for anything that is really their own? 

And so I found myself caught by the glamour of this 


194 CITIES OF SICILY 


Arabian fairyland. I too altogether succumbed to its 
fascination, its curiously exotic charm. And I spent day 
after day peering about Palermo to find even a fragment of 
it hidden in a church, which, now of the fourteenth or the 
seventeenth century, kept just one thing of that strange © 
time—part of a cloister here, a doorway there, a window or 
an inscription. 

It was little enough I found. 

In the Piazza Marina I came to the Palazzo Chiaramonte 
which was rebuilt, preserving much of an earlier building, 
in the early years of the fourteenth century, by the Chiara- 
monte family. It is said to stand upon the site of a palace 
of the Saracen Emirs and I suppose those wonderful Arabian 
windows must date from that time or at any rate from the 
Norman dynasty: they are worth any trouble to see. 
The roof too of the great wall should be noted ; it is a fine 
thing painted by Simone da Corleone and Cecco di Nano 
at the end of the fourteenth century, but still with much of 
Saracenic inspiration about it. 

Then the little church close by, of S. Antonio Abbate, 
though ruinous is certainly of the Norman time, when 
nearly all that was built seems to have been the work of 
the Saracen builders. 

Not far away towards the station is the desolate Piazza 
Magione on which stands the church of La Magione built in 
1161 for the Cistercians and given in 1193 by Henry VI 
to the knights of the Teutonic Order. It has been hope- — 
lessly restored it is true, but the charming little Arabic 
cloister remains, that I was glad not to have overlooked. 

In the Piazza della Vittoria between the Palazzo Reale 
and the Duomo, is the ruined Norman church of La Mad- 
dalena, and in the Via dell’ Incoronata behind the Cathedral 
is the ruined church of the Incoronata where King Roger 
was crowned. 

Nor must I forget the Casa Normanna in the Salita S. 
Antonio, close to the Quattro Canti behind S. Matteo in 
the Corso, for it has the most lovely Arabic windows, as 
fine as anything of the kind in the city. 

And it is remarkable: even when the Saracens were all — 
gone and the Norman kings dead or exiled something of 





CLOISTER AT MONREALE 


THE 





BRONZE DOORS BY BONANNO, MONREALE 





PALERMO 195 


this strange spirit lingers still in the work of their successors. 
Look at the fourteenth-century churches of S. Agostino in 
Via S. Agostino and of S. Francesco near the Giardino 
Garibaldi. They are of the fourteenth century and their 
rose windows and portals are I presume of that time, yet 
how much they still suggest the Saracen, almost like a 
melody which the mind cannot quite forget or quite recall. 

But once or twice in Palermo the Norman stands forth 
free of the spell of his Arabian dream ; and not only in the 
crypt of the Cathedral. It might seem as though Walter 
“of the Mill,” Archbishop of Palermo and Chancellor of 
the kingdom, was not subject to the Saracen enchantment, 
that in all this dazzling sunlight he remembered the grey 
towers of Normandy and England and could not forget 
them or forego them even here, amid the minarets and 
domes, the curiously wrought roofs, the art and cunning 
of the east. 

He was Archbishop from 1168 to 1193. How much he 
had to do with the crypt of his Cathedral, where he lies, I 
know not, but he certainly built, and in the real Norman 
English way, the church of Santo Spirito, famous as the 
church of J Vesprvi the Sicilian Vespers, when at vespers on 
Easter Monday 1282 all the French were massacred. 

The Archbishop founded here a Cistercian monastery 
in 1173 and as you enter the church to-day it is as though 
suddenly you had returned home: in its stark strength 
and gaunt nobility, its massive round stone pillars naked 
of ornament, its pointed arches (there alone perhaps we 
may find the Saracen influence) it is one of the most moving 
sanctuaries in Palermo and bears witness to the character 
of the great man who determined to build it. 

It was Walter “of the Mill”’ again who built about the 
same time (1174) the pure Norman church of S. Cristina la 
Vetera close to the Incoronata behind the Cathedral. 
Certainly, whatever may have befallen the Norman kings, 
this man was immovably true to the North, and, like so 
many of us his countrymen, preferred above all foreign 
things even in a foreign place the things of home. 

The other churches of Palermo have a different and for 
me certainly a lesser interest. 


- 


196 CITIES OF SICILY 





There is S. Domenico, for instance, a great church capa- — 
ble of holding many thousands of people. It was builtin 
the seventeenth century and many famous Sicilians are — 
buried there: itis I suppose to Palermo what S. Croce is — 
to Florence. The most interesting thing in the church, — 
however, is a relief of the Madonna and Child by Antonio 
Gagini. 

In the Via Bambinai behind this church is the Oratorio 
del SS. Rosario. Here is an altar-piece by Van Dyck— 
the Madonna del Rosario and some wonderful baroque 
decorations in stucco by Serpotta who was famous for this 
work. 

You find his work again in the Oratorio di S. Zita close 
by in the Via Valverde where the seats are inlaid with — 
mother-of pearl. In the church of S. Zita dating from the 
fourteenth century you find the best work of Antonio 
Gagini, a triple relief, of the Birth, Death and Assumption 
of the Blessed Virgin. : 

But much more delightful than any of these dull and © 
overloaded buildings, is the church of S. Maria della Catena 
at the very end of the Corso towards the sea by the Porta — G 
Felice. This is a charming late Renaissance building with — : 
a lovely portico from which you may get a glimpse both of ‘ 
the Cala and of the sea. Its name comes to it from the 5 
chain with which the old harbour was closed. S. Maria — 
Nuova behind the old harbour has a similar vestibule. _ 

I say nothing of the Convento de’ Cappuccini and its” 
gruesome corridors lined with the mummified bodies of the 
wealthy inhabitants of seventeenth and eighteenth-century © 
Palermo in their best clothes, for I have never seen it. © 
Those who have, have told me it is a melancholy but — 
not uninteresting spectacle. It is certainly a spectacle — 
which all strangers who come to Palermo seem to wish © 
to see. a 

It somehow did not attract me. I preferred to lounge P 
about those labyrinthine streets in the heart of the city — 
looking for a bit of Sicilian Gothic, as in the portal of the — 
SS. Annunziata which charmed me as did its early Renais- 
sance interior. I liked better to come by chance upon a ~ 
beautiful thing like the lovely Renaissance church of S. — 

















PALERMO 197 


Agata behind the Cathedral in the Via dell’ Incoronata, or 
the graceful facade, also of the Renaissance, of S. Chiara 
by the Piazza Bologni or to wander into S. Giorgio of the 
Genoese, lovelier than S. Agata; or to admire at the gorgeous 
baroque of S. Caterina by the Municipio. 


Ill 


Modern Palermo, however, has its amusing sides. 

“So you do not believe in the Evil Eye?” said my 
friend. 

I did not answer, if for no other reason but that I was out 
of breath. Two minutes before we had been sitting at a 
little table in the Piazza drinking vermouth and seltzer, 
like a couple of hundred other people one warm evening, 
and then suddenly every table was empty, every one 
sauntered away, and my friend, seizing my arm, insisted 
on my going too, just as I was about to pay for our refresh- 
ment. In an alley-way, well out of sight of the Piazza, he 
explained the very reasonable cause of every one’s action. 

It seems that a moment before every one moved away, 
leaving their drinks unfinished and their ices uneaten, a 
certain signore—notoriously in possession of the Evil Eye— 
had sauntered up to a table and sat down. That was why 
the Piazza and caffe and all the little tables had emptied 
themselves. 

“And even so he may have looked at us!” 

I laughed. 

“So,” said my friend, ‘‘ you do not believe in the Evil 
Eye.” 

No. I didn’t think I did. I was quite sure I didn’t. 
We hadn’t got it in England. In Scotland maybe. But 
within the realm of the Church of England ... no, it 
was unheard of. Certainly I didnot believe init. Besides, 
I hadn’t finished my vermouth. 

My friend was somewhat scornful. 

“The Church of England, caro amico! Why, Pope 
Pius IX himself had it ?” 

14 


198 CITIES OF SICILY 


“Had what? ” 

“‘ Malocchio.”’ 

“Nonsense! What are you telling me? ” a 

“I tell you, whenever Pio Nono held a Consistory, all — 
the Cardinals made the horns under their robes.” 

“The horns ? ” 

“Caro amico, there are three ways of warding off the 
Evil Eye. One is to close the middle and third fingers of 
the hand with the thumb, and to point the first and little 
fingers at the Person. Better is the second way, when, 
instead of pointing at the Person, you touch iron with 
the two outstretched fingers—for instance, your keys in 
your pocket. The third way, and the most efficacious .. . 
I will tell you another time.”’ 

“Giovanni, it is a game for children.” 

“For children? Am [I a child? Caro amico, am I 
not a great artist—am I not one of the great pianists of 
our time?” (Heis.) ‘“‘ Well, I tell you it is no game for 
children. It is not a game at all. Listen to me.” He 
seized my coat lapels and thrust his face into mine. Gio- 
vanni is very eager and what we used to call in England, 
“intense.” | 

‘Listen to me. You remember when, last year, you 
saw me off to Italy—at Victoria, was it not? Well, at 
Bologna I saw that Person. I got out of the train there on 
the way to Florence to get a sandwich, and by ill-luck 
there he was. I did all I could to avoid him, but he man- — 
aged to speak to me. I knew then something would 
happen.” 

“What folly!” 

“Caro, I knew. And I was right. No sooner had — 
the train got into those accursed tunnels on the Apennine 
than the engine broke down, and we were there for four 
hours! FOUR HOURS!! Stifling with smoke, gasping 
for air, our handkerchiefs before our mouths, our noses, 
our eyes. In that heat! Dio mio, half dead!” { 

“Well, that might happen any day. It had not Ps 
to do with . * 

“ Don’t say his name. Not to do with him? Caro = 
amico, on the next day I gave my great concert in Florence. 





foe We eae maa ee te 
Se PO ot Mek AO pO ee eee 








PALERMO 199 


The huge hall was packed ; it was areal triumph. Just as 
I sat down at the piano I looked over the great hall full of 
people, a sea of faces, and there, coming in at the door, 
I saw that Person.” 

“Well? ” 

“T began to play. I had not played six notes when... 
Crash! Crash! Down came the great chandelier in the 
middle of the hall. My concert was over, and the Miser- 
icordia busy.”’ 

“Well, well; what a misfortune ! ” 

“Yes. We had to return all the money, except the 
subscriptions.”’ 

“Ah! Well, let me go and pay for our vermouth.” 

“No, don’t go. If you must pay, send a small boy. 
Ecco! Ragazzo, ragazzo.”’ 

““What a shame! Well, as I don’t believe in the Evil 
Eye, I don’t mind sending him. Wait a minute...” 

I felt in all my pockets, but the purse was gone. I 
must have left it on the little table in the Piazza when we 
left so hurriedly. Yes, I remembered, just as I was going 
to pay. 

“What is it? ” 

“Why, you will have to pay after all. I’ve lost my 
purse.”’ 

“What’s that?” 

“T have lost my purse.” 

“You have lost your purse? ”’ 

coves.” 7 

mou, wave... lost... your... purse?” 

“T tell you so.” 

Thank God.” 

“What do you mean? ” 

“It was you he looked at, then, not me.” 

“Who ? ” 

“That Person.” 

“What nonsense! ... ” 

“Ha! I forget; of course, you don’t believe in the Evil 
re 


200 CITIES OF SICILY 


IV 


One of the most Sicilian things in Palermo is the Museum 
established in the convent of the Chiesa dell’ Olivella. 
There you will find in a marvellous confusion, due to the 
unsuitable building, an extraordinary collection of beauti- 
ful and banal objects, of important and trifling things, the 
whole story of Sicily in this débris from temple and tomb, 
from church and mosque, from the Greek, Roman, Saracen, 
Norman and Spanish civilizations which have, with how 
many others, succeeded one another on this island of the 
three seas. 

I found myself continually returning to those littered 
cloisters, those curiously sober rooms at the end of dark 
corridors, at the top of winding staircases, perhaps because 
this was the quietest place in the city, perhaps because 
one never knew what one would come upon in so confused 
a place. 

Happily the more important Greek objects are for the 
most part exceedingly well shown in two rooms called 
the Sala di Imera and the Sala di Selinunte; the less 
important things being distributed in the cloisters where 
it is pleasant to spend the hot afternoons searching them 
out. 

In the Sala di Imera are displayed not only those objects 
which have come from Himera or Therme, but it seems 
the later finds which are as yet not officially described. 

The major objects in this room, however, are three great 
Lion masks or heads of limestone from a Doric Temple at 


Himera. They are of the fifth century B.c. and exceed- 


ingly fine, splendid in design and most vigorous in execu- 
tion. They came no doubt from the cornice where they 
fulfilled the purpose of the gargoyles of a Gothic church. 

I passed by the great herma of Dionysos, though its 
grave majestic aspect gives it some nobility, for it seems 
to me a Hellenistic work, a copy of some original of the 
school of Praxitiles: nor did the Roman works displayed 
here interest me. But how can I tell my delight in that 
archaic relief of a man and a woman dancing, and in 


another similar relief there, whose subject I could not 4 












PALERMO 201 


divine, or in that lovely full length figure of a nude—Aphro- 
dite perhaps,—that is numbered 716, but which I could not 
find in the Catalogue, nor even obtain a photograph of it. 
From this room one passes directly into the Sala di 
Selinunte. The walls here are all lined with the Metopes 
from the Temples C, E and F of Selinus. The oldest 
of these Temples was Temple C on the acropolis, of which 
the vast ruins remain, though overthrown, to so large an 
‘extent intact. It dates from the early part of the sixth 
century B.c. It was our countrymen Harris and Angell 
who in 1822 discovered three of the metopes of this 
temple now admirably arranged in this room between 
what I suppose are the original triglyphs under a modern 
copy of a portion of the massive entablature. The first 
represents a Quadriga with a charioteer and what appears 
to be two Victories with garlands. It has been suggested 
that this may represent Oenomaus.! The second repre- 
sents Perseus beheading the Gorgon Medusa; and behind 
the hero Athena stands. The third represents Herakles 
with the Cercopes, those thievish and horrible gnomes 
—monkeys maybe—who robbed him while he slept. 
These metopes are very primitive and are apparently 
adapted from bronze reliefs. It is curious that the first 
should be technically so different from the other two; 
for while they are carved in low relief, the first has much 
greater depth, the foreparts of the horses being completely 
in the round, and the effect of the foreshortening is almost 
successful. This metope seems also to be more skilfully 


1 Oenomaus was King of Pisa in Elis. It had been declared to 
him by an oracle that he should die when his daughter Hippo- 
dameia should marry. In consequence he made it a condition that 
those who would be her suitors should contend with himself in the 
chariot race: he who conquered him should receive her, but those 
that he should conquer should suffer death. The race-course was 
from Pisa to the altar of Poseidon on the Isthmus of Corinth— 
right across the Peloponnesus. All went as he wished till Pelops, 
son of Tantalus, came to Pisa. He, driving the horses he had re- 
ceived from Poseidon, reached the goal before Oenomaus, for, as 
some say, he had bribed the charioteer Myrtillus to remove the 
pegs from the wheels of the king’s chariot. Oenomaus killed him- 
self after cursing Pelops and all his race. One of the pediments 
of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia is devoted to him. 


202 CITIES OF SICILY 


carved than the other two; but it must be remembered 
that all was once covered with brilliant colours, remains 
of which may still be seen on the Perseus. 

Another set of three metopes also of the sixth century 
is preserved here. These were discovered by Professor 
Salinas in 1892. They seem to be the work of a different 
school from the foregoing, and the subjects are certainly 
derived from Crete. Here we see Europa riding on the 
Bull across the sea; Herakles and the Cretan Bull; anda 
Sphinx. The Europa is exquisite in delicacy and charm. 
It might seem certain that we have here the achievement 
of a much more learned and an older tradition of art 
than in the metopes from Temples C and F; but these 
also were once covered with stucco and painted with 
colours. 

Close by are the lower parts of two metopes from Temple 
F—one of the temples on the eastern hill of Selinus. These 
are somewhat later than the foregoing but still belong to 
the sixth century. They represent a contest between Gods 
and giants. 

Upon the wall at the end of the room four metopes have 
been arranged of a later time. They come from Temple 
E on the eastern hill at Selinus, and date from the middle 
of the fifth century B.c. They represent the marriage of 
Zeus and Hera, the Punishment of Acteon by Artemis, 
Herakles slaying Hippolyte and Athena slaying the giant 
Enceladus. Their exquisite refinement verges on weak- 
ness, they have nothing of the vigour or even of the great 
decorative quality of the earlier metopes, and a disagree- 
able peculiarity is that the faces, the hands and feet 
of the female figures are inserted in white marble. Of 
course these works too were coloured, so that the contrast 





between the cold white marble and the coarse warm stone, . 


which is so distressing to-day, was not found when they 
were in their original state. 
Other Greek works the museum possesses, among them 
a collection of vases from Gela and Selinus, but nothing 
comparable with these sculptures from Selinus and Himera. 
That magnificent series of Greek works of the. sixth and 
fifth centuries B.c. is by far the most important possession 





PALERMO 203 


of the Museum. In comparison with these the rest of 
the objects is only a collection of curiosities. 

Among these curiosities, and not the least lovely, are 
the fragments of Saracenic art preserved in the Sala Araba 
on the first floor. Here are many wood-carvings, frag- 
ments of ceilings in the honeycomb style, a white and gold 
terra-cotta vase from Mazzara, an astrolabe of 955 and many 
Cuphic inscriptions. 

The second floor is devoted to the extensive picture 

gallery in which not a single work of the Sicilian school of 
the first importance is to be found. Its great treasure is 
the small triptych of the early Flemish school, probably by 
Mabuse in the Gabinetto Malvagna. 
_ Among the Italian pictures it is interesting to note two 
works by Pisan masters of the fourteenth century, one a 
charming panel of the Madonna and Child on a gold ground 
by Giovanni di Niccold, the other a signed work, a large 
altar-piece of the Madonna and Child enthroned between 
saints and angels by Turino Vanni the second. Here too 
is the only signed work by Bartolommeo da Camogli, a 
Madonna of Humility with a curious predella from the 
church of S. Francesco. 

Of the Sicilian school we find a fine fourteenth-century 
altar-piece of the Coronation of the Virgin with saints and 
beneath a predella, attributed to the Pisan school (No. 75) 
and another triptych (No. 82) perhaps by the same hand 
also representing the Coronation of the Virgin. 

The best pictures in Palermo are not, however, to be 
found here, but must be sought in the Chiaramonte col- 
lection where there is a fine picture of the Madonna and 
Child of the school of Giotto, two fine panels of S. Peter 
and S. Paul by Lippo Memmi, a polyptych by Pietro 
Lorenzetti and a panel of S. Lucy by Taddeo di Bartolo. 


\ 


Vv 


. . . After all, the museum did not really interest me. 
I found myself continually wandering back into that 


204 CITIES OF SICILY 


wonderful Arabian tale and seeking to forget the city of 
yesterday and to-day in La Martorana and S. Cataldo or 
S. Giovanni and its garden of love, or through a whole 
afternoon in watching the light change and fade upon the 
precious gold and mosaics of the Cappella Palatina. 

And then there were those Villas or Palaces rather, 
pavilions of delight and beauty which the same Arabian 
and Byzantine genius built and contrived for the same 
Norman lords: La Zisa, La Cuba, La Cubola, La Favara 
and Menani. 

All these are quite outside the city and were once sur- 
rounded, as some of them are still, by the loveliest gardens 
and parks in the world. 

That nearest to the city is La Zisa, beyond the Porta 
Nuova. It was originally built for William I who gave it 
an Arabian name, as we should say “ The Glory,” El Aziz, 
which has been transformed by the Sicilians into La Zisa. 
It is sadly changed and desolate amid its neglected sur- 
roundings, and only a single exquisite stone pine remains 
of the garden which was the pride of Sicily, as the inscrip- 
tion there proclaims: As Europe is the glory of the world, 
Italy of Europe, Sicily of Italy, so this garden is the pride of 
Sicily. And yet in spite of everything the ghost of all that 
beauty still haunts this square keep of hewn stone with its 
curious rectangular tower, though that blind arcading in 
the two upper storeys about the palace has been broken 
by windows : windows which of old did not look thus with- 


out, but were only built to look within upon the inner 
court. And I wonder how old those battlements may 


be ? 

Within, on the entrance floor, is a small open hall in the 
central recess of which a fountain runs forth in a channelled 
way across the pavement. There are three recesses and 
each is covered with a marvellous honeycomb design, 
similar to what you find in the Alhambra. And the walls 
are encrusted with Byzantine mosaics of huntsmen and 
peacocks with a lovely border of flowers. 

That is all: only a hint really, only a gaunt ruin left 
to remind us of all that Leandro Alberti found here so short 


a time ago as the sixteenth century: little more than a — 


ties 
ath eee Se 


PALERMO 205 


ruin at any rate. And those gardens? Why the road 
passes over their dead beauty that is now dust. Only that 
single stone pine remains to remind us of what once they 
were. , 

It is again out of Porta Nuova you go to find another 
of these Arabian Palaces: La Cuba, which alas is certainly 
in no better case than La Zisa, for this pavilion where 
Gianni di Procida in the Decameron found his lost lady is 
now a barrack. It was built for William II in rr82. An 
oblong rectangular building like La Zisa surrounded by a 
blind arcading of pointed panels, embattled above with a 
parapet bearing a Cuphic inscription, its small court 
within has a single recess covered with the lovely Arabian 
honeycomb decoration. Yet here something, though not 
much of the gardens remains, but the park and fishponds 
are gone and the road passes right across the pleasance 
where Boccaccio’s lovers were caught asleep naked in each 
others arms. 

And indeed you must cross the road now to find the 
loveliest of all these Arabian buildings, La Cubola, a pavilion 
which of old stood in the gardens of La Cuba, but now 
is separated from them. Imagine four pointed arches 
Opening in a great square low tower of stone which sup- 
ports a small cupola: each of those arches gives you a 
vista of dusky orange grove or palm alley or green lemon 
walk, and La Cubola itself is still complete and perfect : 
the most charming of all the Arab buildings in Sicily. 
Yet something you feel is lacking: the fountain which 
used to play, but no longer, beneath the cupola, its music 
echoing in the deep shade through the silent garden 
groves. 

Outside Porta Garibaldi you soon come upon the great 
bridge of so many arches built by the Admiral Georgios 
Antiochenos, who was later to build La Martorana in 
honour of the Blessed Virgin. -This is still an Arabo- 
Byzantine creation and is worth some trouble to see; 
while only a little farther on the highway stands another 
Arabo-Byzantine building, the church of S. Giovanni dei 
Lebbrosi, built in 1071 for Robert Guiscard. The church 


1 Decameron, v, 6, 


206 CITIES OF SICILY 


stands it is said on the site where the Normans camped 
when Palermo was taken at last. It has been much 
restored but the original walls and the cupola remain at any 
rate from the Norman times. 

Turning here to the right and taking the road for Bran- 
caccio, in little more than a mile one comes beyond that 
village to another of those Arabian pleasances, that 
named Sweet Waters, La Favara, the Castello di Mar Dolce. 
It seems to have been built about 1153 and was perhaps 
the most splendid of all those pavilions in which the 
Norman kings delighted, being indeed a hunting pavilion 
built round a large open court. It was a favourite of 
Frederick II too and is praised and sung by many through- 
out the Middle Age. It stands on the first of the hills, 
the last spur seaward of Monte Grifone here thrust out, a 
great headland into the Conca d’Oro. It was it seems 
chiefly famous for its baths and fountains, fragments of 
which remain, together with its small chapel covered by a 
cupola. But its wonderful gardens and park have wholly 
disappeared and we have to go to the Arabian Abdurahman 
to learn of their beauty. 

“O how beautiful,’ he writes, “‘how beautiful is the lakelet 
of the twin palm trees and the island where the spacious 
palace stands! The clear waters of the double springs are 
like liquid pearls and their basin is a sea; you might say 
that the boughs of the trees leaned down to look at the fishes 
in the pool and smile at them. The great fishes swim in those 
transparent waters and the birds sing their songs among the 
gardens. The ripe oranges of the island are like fire burning 
upon boughs of emerald ; the pale lemon recalls a lover who 
has wept all night for the absent beloved. The two palms 
ave like friends who have gained a retreat inaccessible to their 
enemies, or stand erect proudly to confound the murmurs 
and calumnies of those who envy them. O palms of the two 


lakelets of Palermo, may unceasing, undisturbed and plenteous 


dews ever refresh you!” 
Nothing of all this might seem to remain except the — 
lemon groves. \ 
A mile farther, or not so much, past the fossil cave, the y 
Grotta dei Giganti, on the lovely mountain side stands — 








MOSAIC OF THE DEATH OF THE VIRGIN, 
LA MARTORANA, PALERMO 





CHIPSA DEI VESPRI, PALERMO 





4 


PALERMO _ 207 


the church of S. Maria di Gest from which you may have 
perhaps the finest of the many fine views of Palermo, the 
Conca d’Oro and the sea. This charming old monastic 
church of the fourteenth century retains a few Sicilian door- 
ways, a charming fountain and some good Renaissance 
tombs. The old cemetery was the burial-place of many 
of the nobles of Palermo. 

And the last of those Arabian pavilions lies high up 
beyond Monreale, beyond San Martino on the Palermitan 
mountains, at the village of Altarello. It is called Mim- 
nerno and is the Arab Menani. Though altogether ruinous 
as I was told, I could not forbear to visit it, for it was said 
to have been built for King Roger and there are none 
too many of these marvellous Saracen buildings to be 
found in the world. SoIset out. At Altarello I found a 
small boy to show me the way, which he did with much 
courtesy, refusing all payment. I found the place ruinous 
indeed, but the chapel remains and part of the interior 
court and the views over Palermo alone make it worth a 
visit. 

Moreover, it is easy to combine with it a visit to the 
Badia di S. Martino. This Monastery, now of course 
suppressed, was a Benedictine house founded by S. Gregory 
in the sixth century. The buildings we see, however, are 
all of the eighteenth century and are without much 
interest. 

And so I came back to Palermo which, apart from such 
things as these, has, I find, little or nothing to say to me. 
mod yet... 

Among the most beautiful things in Palermo are the 
delicious gardens in which I think she is richer than any 
other city within the Italian kingdom. For the most part 
they are like all southern gardens, full of shade and regu- 


_ larly planned, really architectural in effect and for the 


most part just the outside courts and rooms of the villa, 
the chief luxury being not so much the often exquisite 
flowers and trees but the water-course, the pool or the 
fountain. There are many examples of this, among the 
most delightful being the garden of the Villa Tasca, which 
is like an exquisite forecourt to the house, and where 


208 CITIES OF SICILY 





water is most admirably used not merely for its refresh- 
ment and its music, the pleasure it can give in itself, in 
this land of sunshine and summer heat, but as a mirrorasit — 
were for the garden, the beauty of that group of trees which 
is so delightfully reflected there, those cypresses about a ~ 
little Temple which continually contemplate their own — 
beauty in the lake. 

The Villa Giulia, La Flora as they call it, the public 
garden, laid out in 1777 by Niccolé Palma, still has an air 
of the eighteenth century. It owes its name to Donna 
Giulia Guevara, the wife of the viceroy of that time, whose 
charming thought it seems to have been to make her city 
lovelier with this pleasance of blossoming trees, where to- 
day the people gather still to listen to music, as I suppose 
they did also when this garden was first designed with 
its alley-ways of laurels and its fountain of Trinacria. a 

Close by is the Botanical Garden, also of the eighteenth 
century, with its great tropical trees, its palms, its yuccas, 
its bamboos, its huge baobabs with their great branches — 
and arms sending vast roots into the ground, for all the 
world like fantastic temples from China or Japan. | 

And then among the loveliest of these gardens of Palermo — 
with their shade and refreshment, are certainly two which I 
should have been unfortunate to miss, the garden of the 
Villa Trabia and the garden of the Villa Sperlinga. The 
latter has I think the oldest and the most beautiful olives _ 
in all western Sicily, half as old as history I suppose; and 
then there is that garden within a garden, a garden enclosed _ 
which for its marvellous colour I have never seen equalled 
anywhere in the world. The walls are encrusted with the — 
bright glowing many-coloured tiles of Caltagirone and even 
of Persia, old oil jars, such as Greece knew, old vases of — 
majolica such as the Phcenicians spread on the beaches ~ 
of the Mediterranean to attract such a princess as the — 
little white Io daughter of Inachus, are filled with all — 
manner of geraniums and calceolarias, and everywhere ~ 
in a blaze of colour are set all the brightest flowers imagin- 
able. It is like some marvellous dream of the Renaissance — 
come true, a miracle that could perhaps only have been ~ 
conceived here, only have come to such brilliant perfection 


a 
Fei 
=m 














PALERMO 209 


in this privileged place and in a land so learned yet so light ; 
light enough for enchantment. 

Nor are these few by any means all the gardens that are 
the delight of this city which without them would be lacking 
in something which it could ill spare—a certain beautiful 
quietness and refinement, a sense of privacy which more 
than all other cities it seems to need. There are the 
gardens of Villa Belmonte above Villa Igeia, that hotel 
for the rich which never seems to belong to Palermo, 
but is like a yacht come to anchor in the harbour. There 
is La Favorita, that royal chateau built by Ferdinand IV 
in the Chinese style, with its gardens of cypresses and pines, 
its dusky thickets and shady walks; there is Villa Scalea 
with its roses, there is Villa Sofia with its far lovelier garden 
and delightful Arabian garden-house. 

All three lie under towering Monte Pellegrino, the great 
isolated headland of limestone which closes the bay of 
Palermo upon the west. This mountain, for it is nothing 
less, is nearly 2,000 feet high and so exceedingly steep 
that the path up is called La Scala. A road zigzags up 
the treeless eastern face, which you find is covered with 
broom and herbage though from below it appears to be quite 
bare. Under an overhanging rock close to the summit 
is the Grotto of S. Rosalia about which a church has been 
built, the Santuario, in 1625. 

S. Rosalia is the omnipotent patron saint of Palermo, as 
S. Lucia is of Syracuse and S. Agatha of Catania, though she 
cannot claim the very great antiquity of these, nor a place 
in the Canon of the Mass. In fact doubts have been cast 
upon her existence at all! It was with some difficulty 
that I was able to learn anything of a definite and non- 
fabulous sort about her, though her name is on every lip, 
and she is famous throughout the island. 

I find, however, that she was the niece of King William 
the Good, and having at an early age given symptoms of a 
distinct vocation for the religious life, at fifteen she retired 
from the world to a lonely hermitage on the Palermitan 
mountains at a place called Quesquina. In the year 1159 
she disappeared and nothing more was heard of her for 
nearly five hundred years—nothing whatever. However, 





210 CITIES OF SICILY 


during the plague of 1624, a “‘ holy man ”’ was vouchsafed 


a vision in which he was told that the “ saint’s’’ bones 3 


were lying in a cave near the top of Monte Pellegrino, 
and that if they were taken up with proper reverence and 
carried in procession thrice round the walls of the city the 
plague would immediately cease. At first it seems no 
one took any notice of the “‘ holy man,’”’ but when he “ grew 
noisy ’’ he began to get adherents and presently the Arch- 
bishop Doria “‘ was obliged ”’ to send to Monte Pellegrino 
to satisfy the people. There they found the bones as he 
had told them, the city was freed from the plague and 
S. Rosalia became the patron of Palermo. It is further 
related that now an inscription from the hand of S. Rosalia 
herself was found in the cave. This told that she had 
been disturbed in her retreat and in order to be in solitude 
had wandered to Monte Pellegrino. Her festival is cele- 
brated at the end of June and on September 4th. 

More interesting than little S. Rosalia’s cavern is the 
marvellous view from the summit of the rock, one of the 
finest in Sicily, giving you on a clear day even the AZolian ~ 
Isles. There, one can well say farewell to Palermo, above — 
the shrine of its saint, for there the whole city, the beautiful — 


bay and the Conca d’Oro with its enclosing mountains lie — 


beneath your eyes, and since not a building is more than 2 
two miles away they can all be noted one after another, — 
the Royal Palace and Chapel, the Cathedral where lie the ~ 


Norman kings, the Cupolas of S. Giovanni, of the Martorana, ~ 


of San Cataldo, the great harbours crowded with shipping, — 
the shores and gardens of the city. Indeed the whole — 
world seen thence seems to be all a garden filled with groves ~ 
of every kind, watered by fountains and rivulets winding ~ 
through that golden shell, which as you see fulfils its name ~ 
not only on account of its wealth, but of its shape and its — 
situation lying there upon the seashore. And I under- — 
stood from that height, the whole beneath my eyes, why ~ 
the place was known of old as Panormus: for indeed it ~ 
is still all harbour, and when, as then, the sea ran right ~ 
up into the midst of the city, this must have been an even ~ 
truer name than it is to-day. _ 

It might seem indeed a place contrived by nature for — 





PALERMO 211 


those old Phoenician traders who first established here 
some sort of settlement and were followed later by their 
Carthaginian brothers. Palermo was never Greek, from 
first to last there was nothing Greek about her. Here on 
Monte Pellegrino you may stand on the Carthaginian fort 
and look over the great bay to its eastern headland Monte 
Catalfano upon which lie the stones of Carthaginian Sol- 
unto, while in between rise the domes of the Saracen, the 
minarets of the Arab, the swarming life of a people that 
even to-day have more of the orient about them than any 
other in western Europe. 


CHAPTER XIV 





BAGHERIA, CEFALU AND THE NORTH COAST i 


whether by train, or motor, or from town to town 

afoot, getting a lift now and again from some 
passing vehicle, you will be struck by the noble magnifi- 
cence of those far stretched headlands, that steep and rocky 
shore with which in fact no other coast of the island can 
compare. 

From Trapani, indeed all the way to Capo Peloro, the 
great rocky capes and headlands thrust out steeply and 
brokenly into the purple sea, forming an innumerable 
series of bays among the loveliest and most various in 
the world and often of the wildest beauty. Sometimes 
these bays open into great gulfs as at Castellamare, at 
Palermo, at Tindari, and at Milazzo; more often of course 
you find smaller half secret inlets, but always and every- 
where the grandeur of the coast, for half the way and 
more in sight of the floating islands of olus, overwhelms 
you and is certainly unmatched in the south and east of 
the island. The north coast of Sicily, historically the 
least interesting and important shore of the island, is 
by far the finest in natural grandeur and beauty. 


L] OWEVER you go along the north coast of Sicily, 


On leaving Palermo for Messina one comes first, on that 4 


long, difficult and lovely road, to Bagheria, less than ten 
miles from the capital, and related to it much as Versailles 


is to Paris or Richmond to London. That is to say that — 


here the nobility of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies had their most splendid villas, some of which have — 


been famous all over the world, as La Valguarnera and La a ‘ 


Palagonia and La Butera. 


Bagheria lies on the landward side of the great and beau- 


212, 





VILLA PALAGONIA 213 


_ tiful headland of Monte Catalfano which closes the gulf 
of Palermo on the east. It is sad to see these glorious 
villas, which when Brydone was in Sicily in the last quarter 
of the eighteenth century were so full of life and splendour, 
to-day half deserted and closed. 

Villa Valguarnera is built on the highest part command- 
ing wonderful views towards Himera, Cefali and the 
fEolian isles on the one side, and the Conca d’Oro, Palermo 
and. Monte Pellegrino on the other. It certainly stands 
in one of the finest situations in Europe, amid its great 
gardens. | 

Villa Palagonia was, however, more famous, not only 
because Goethe devoted so many pages to it, but for its 
own absurd and outrageous sake. Alas, it has fallen 
into decay and many of its more monstrous decorations 
have been removed to make room for others less amazing 
but quite as much out of place. Indeed no traveller 
_ but must feel sorry that the villa was ever tampered with. 
It was one of the most astonishing affairs in Europe and 
perhaps not so absurd as it is said to have been by a gener- 
ation of travellers who seem to have missed its irony. 
Brydone saw it at its best but within a few years after 
it had already been partly dismantled. He describes the 
villa as like no other on earth, and says, it was built by 
the Prince of Palagonia, a man of immense fortune, who 
had devoted his whole life to the study of monsters and 
chimeras greater and more ridiculous than ever entered into 
the imagination of the wildest writers of romance or 
knight-errantry. 

He omits to mention the beautiful cypress avenue that is 
one of the great delights of the place, but describes the 
amazing crowd of statues that surrounded the house and 
appeared, at a distance, like a little army drawn up for its 
defence. 

_“ When you get amongst them, you imagine you have got 
into the regions of delusion and enchantment ; for of all of 
that immense group there is not one made to represent any 
one object in nature ; nor is the absurdity of the wretched 
imagination that created them less astonishing than its 
wonderful fertility. It would require a volume to describe 

15 


214 CITIES OF SICILY 


the whole . . . He has put the heads of men to the bodies 
of every sort of animal and the heads of every other animal 
to the bodies of men. Sometimes he makes a compound 
of five or six animals that have no sort of resemblance in 
nature. He puts the head of a lion on the neck of a goose, 
the body of a lizard, the legs of a goat, the tail of a fox. 
On the back of this monster he puts another if possible 
still more hideous, with five or six heads and a crest of 
horns, that beats the beast in the Revelation all to nothing. 
There is no kind of horn in the world that he has not 
collected, and his pleasure is to see them all flourishing 
on the same head. The scandalous chronicle says that his 
wife has assisted him in making this collection and that 
there are some of her placing as well as of his. His sincere 
wish is that she may bring forth a monster. It is truly 
unaccountable that he has not been shut up many years 
ago; but he is perfectly innocent and troubles nobody 
by the indulgence of his frenzy ; on the contrary he gives 
bread to a vast number of statuaries and other workpeople 
whom he rewards in proportion as they bring their imagin- 


ations to coincide with his own . . . The statues which 
adorn the great avenue and surround the court of the 
palace amount already to 600... The inside of this 


enchanted castle corresponds exactly with the out; it is 
in every respect as whimsical and fantastical, and you 
cannot turn yourself to any side, where you are not stared 
in the face by some hideous figure or other. The vast 
arched roofs are composed entirely of large mirrors, nicely 
joined together, so that when three or four people are 


walking below there is always the appearance of three or — 
four hundred walking above. All the chimney-pieces, — 


windows and sideboards are crowded with pyramids and 
pillars of tea-pots, caudle-cups, bowls, cups, saucers and 


so forth, strongly cemented together; some of these ~ 
columns are not without beauty: one of them has a large ~ 


china chamber-pot for its base and a circle of pretty little 
flower-pots for its capital: I dare say there is not less than 


forty pillars and pyramids formed in this strange fantastic 3 


manner. ... 


It was of course generally believed that the Prince was — 





SOLUNTUM 215 


mad and Brydone certainly thinks so. He does not seem 
to have perceived the fierce irony of it all: that a man 
living in such a polity as that of this kingdom might well 
perceive that he was surrounded by monsters and so 
represent the world as consisting of such beasts. Even 
to-day—perhaps more than ever to-day—and not only in 
Sicily. .-.. 

Another fantastic villa is the Villa Butera, called the 
Certosa, because it is filled with curious historical figures in 
wax represented as monks: most hideous and cunning in 
aspect. Irony again. These people were rather furious 
than mad. 

Upon the further side of Monte Catalfano on the rocks of 
Capo Zaffarano lie the extensive ruins of Soluntum in a 
magnificent situation over the sea looking across the vast 
and shallow Bay of Himera to the far stretched headland 
of Cefaliu. This impregnable place upon the bold and 
_ lofty promontory was never a Greek settlement. It was, 
and most characteristically, Phoenician. As Thucydides 
says in his sixth book, the Phoenicians had settlements all 
round Sicily on the promontories along the sea-coast for 
the sake of trade with the Sikels: these they walled off. 
But when the Greeks also began to come in by sea in large 
numbers the Phcenicians left most of these places and 
settling together lived in Motya, Soluntum and Panormus, 
near the Elymi, partly because they trusted in their 
alliance with the Elymi and partly because from the 
north-west corner of Sicily the voyage to Carthage was 
shortest. 

Soluntum soon came into the possession of the Car- 
thaginians and was able to withstand Dionysius of Syra- 
cuse in 397 B.C., when he made his greatest and most 
successful attack upon the Carthaginian cities of Sicily. 
He ravaged its territory but could not take the city, which 
however was betrayed into his hands in the following year, 
according to Diodorus, who simply notes the fact but does 
not explain how this coup was brought about. It soon 
came again into the hands of Carthage, probably under the 
treaty of 383 B.C., when the Halycus was established as 
the permanent frontier between Greek and Carthaginian. 


216 CITIES OF SICILY 


Later the place was given up for a moment to the mer- 
cenaries of Agathocles, and in the First Punic War, after the 
fall of Panormus, it opened its gates to the Romans and 
thereafter existed as a small municipal town in the dominion 
of Rome. 

Unhappily little or nothing remains to-day of the 
Phoenician or Carthaginian settlement. The considerable 


remains we see are all of the Roman time: fragments of © 


walls, parts of two temples, a paved causeway and traces 
of another road over the hill up to the town, capitals, columns 
and friezes, together with several cisterns for water. 
These, with some fragments of sculpture of considerable 
interest and beauty now in the Museum at Palermo, have 
earned for these desolate ruins the name of the “ Pompeii 
of Sicily.” 

The road now becoming more and more picturesque, after 
Solunto enters the Bay of Himera, passing, after crossing 
the S. Michele torrent, the ruins of a great Norman church 


on a hill to the right called Chiesazza, founded in 1077 by ~ 
Robert Guiscard ; and presently one climbs up into the — 


picturesque town of Termini Imerese. 


This quite pleasant town, with a fairly good inn, is of 4 


course famous to-day as in antiquity for its warm saline 


springs, those “hot baths of the Nymphs” of which ~ 
Pindar speaks. It was the successor of the more ancient — 
city of Himera which lay on the other side of the Torto ~ 
valley on the hills towards the sea between it and the Fiume 


Grande. 

It is not perhaps worth any but the most eager traveller’s 
while to seek out the site of ancient Himera, important 
though it was and the birthplace of the poet Stesichorus, 
for almost nothing remains on that steep and overgrown 


hillside nor on the plateau above it; only the remains of a 


Doric temple in the marsh towards the sea. Neverthe- 
less, I walked out there, for I could not pass without going 


to see the spot where Gelon of Syracuse broke the Car-— 


thaginian armies on the same day in the same year as 
Salamis. 


That great Greek city, the only Greek city according to 
Thucydides upon all the north coast of Sicily, stood above 


SHINOGVW HHL NI 


Sore rea em 











HIMERA 217 


the River Himera, now Fiume Grande, whence it received 
its name. It was a colony of Zankle (Messina), Chalcidic 
therefore, but it received also a number of Syracusan exiles 
and with them a Doric touch, and was founded according 
to Diodorus’ calculation in 648 B.c., and here about 635 B.c. 
was born the poet Stesichorus whose lovely verses offended 
Helen of Troy, so that she blinded him till he wrote what 
is called the Palinode, a Recantation, when she restored him 
his sight. His poems were in the Doric dialect and accord- 
ing to Cicero there was a statue of him here, which was 
carried later to Termini, as an old man bending over a 
book. This, Cicero says, was a masterpiece of art and 
represented a man who dwelt indeed at Himera, but en- 
joyed through his genius a great and still living reputation 
in every part of Greece. 

Almost nothing remains to us of his twenty-six books of 
verse, but among the fragments we find this, which is what, 
maybe, offended the divine Helen, for he tells ‘‘ How 
-Tyndareus one day in making sacrifice to all the Gods 
forgot the joy-giving Cypris; and in anger she caused 
the daughters of Tyndareus to be twice wed and thrice, 
and forsakers of husbands.”’ 

That was a very mild offence in comparison with some 
of the things that have been said of Helen by other poets. 
Lycophron, for instance, not only alludes to her three 
husbands but calls her the AXgyan bitch who bore only 
female children. But then this blasphemer calls Aphrodite 
the “‘old hag,’ so Helen need not mind. 

I suppose every man has his own notion of Helen and 
very few will agree with our Chalcidian friend, if indeed it 
was he who wrote the Alexandra. She has always been 
and will always be the theme of poets: but no one has yet 
explained why Menelaus—seeing he was Menelaus—did 
not kill her when Troy was taken at last, amid all that 
blackguard butchery; but was reconciled with her and 
brought her home. 

Was it her overwhelming beauty that saved her, or her 
essential innocence, the will of Aphrodite in her as the 

Greeks might have said? Or, after all, had she very little 
to do with the whole tragic business ? 


218 CITIES OF SICILY 


For instance : let me put what I mean in the form of a 
Mime by Sophron of Syracuse who invented Mimes, or by 
Herondas of Cos,—at least it will help to pass this rainy 
day at Therme. 


THE FREEDOM OF THE STRAITS 


“Now all the adventures of Odysseus stout of heart, I 
could not tell or number so many they were ; but what 
a deed was that which he dared and did in his hardiness 
in the land of the Trojans, where ye Achzans suffered 
affliction. He subdued his body with unseemly stripes, 
and cast rags upon his shoulders, and in the guise of a 
beggar went into the ways of Troy, and the Trojans knew 
him not ; only Helen knew him in that guise.’’—Odyssey, 
Book IV. 


SCENE: The lofty Acropolis of Troy, the Agora, from which, 
through a wooden port in the great wall, one may look over 
the plain to the Greek camp and the Hellespont. In the 
midst of the Agora is a fountain, upon the steps of which 
ODYSSEUS lies disguised as a beggar. It is dawn, and 


the townsfolk are coming to the fountain to draw water. 


They take no notice of the beggar ; they are discussing the 
war. 


First Trojan. Ain’t she worth it? | 
SECOND TROJAN. All this misery? I’ve lost two 
SONS.o6 acs 


First TROJAN. Ain't she worthit? I reckon she’s the — 


best woman in the world. 


(Enter HELEN with ANDROMACHE: they pass through the 
Agora on their way to the gate to bid farewell to PARIS — 
and Hector. HELEN looks at the beggar, but gives — 


no sign of recognition. The crowd cheers and doffs its 
cap.) : 7 


First TRojAN. Ain’t she worth it? 
SECOND TROJAN. Well, perhaps so. 





poe ge ee ee ee a ee eee 





A MIME 219 


First Trojan. Ain’t she the most beautiful woman 
intheworld? Ain’tshe the bestwoman in the world? . 


(Enter Paris and HECTOR.) 


Paris. JI don’t know what she wants. 
Hector. It is certainly very awkward. 
Paris. She’s deceiving me. There’s that Deiphobus. 


There’s . . . I’m damned if I know what she means. 
Hector. You surely can’t mean you suspect her 
of . . . inconstancy ? | 


Paris. Can’t I? Ill get rid of her. Ill send her 
back to Menelaus. 

Hector. But think of the scandal! ... This awful 
WATS ea. 

Paris. Well, what of it? 

Hector. But that’s what we’re fighting about. 

Paris. What? 

Hector. Why, Helen ! 

Paris. My dear chap!... 

Hector. Well, isn’t it? I don’t want to hurt your 
feelings, but... 

Paris. So you still think the war is about Helen? 

Hector. Well, what is it about? I know this is a 
scandal, but I don’t see any chance of getting people to 
believe that the war is mot about Helen. You carried her 
_ off, and... and there you are. Without being a pro- 
Greek you must admit... 

Paris. Rot. What chance is there for our future if the 
Greeks win? That’s the point. 


(They go out talking. The Agora is now deserted save for the 
beggar, who still lies on the steps by the fountain. Enter 
HELEN.) 


HELEN. Odysseus ! 

ODYSSEUS (gazing at her, trembling with terror, realizing 
that his life is in her hands). Helen ! 

HELEN. Odysseus! ! 

OpyssEus (still gazing and trembling). But... but 
they told me you had become a plain woman ! 


220 CITIES OF SICILY 


HELEN. Odysseus!!! How dare you say that tome! 
(He continues to gaze at hey.) But...Isuppose...I 
must excuse you. After all, you were one of my suitors, 

OpyssEus. Yes, and ever shall be. (Then, with happy 
thought.) That is why I couldn’t keep away. 

HELEN. Oh, Odysseus (coming close to him and looking 
about), how bored I am! Bored! Bored!! Bored!!! 

OpyssEus. Bored? 

_ HELEN. Bored, bored, bored. Bored by the Trojans, 
by Paris, by Hector, by Andromache, by all Troy. Bar- 
barians, barbarians, barbarians! (Throwing herself into 
his arms.) Release me, deliver me, save me! Take me 
back to my husband ! | 

OpyssEus. But the war? and...er... Paris? 

HELEN. Why did I ever leave Menelaus? Why was 
I carried off? He was far better than this. It was some- 
times amusing at Lacedzemon. 

OpyssEus. But surely you won’t maintain that Mene- 
laus isn’t a bore? Why the whole camp is bored stiff 
with him. I never met anyone who didn’t find him an 
intolerable bore. 

HELEN (suddenly and eagerly). Oh, he is, he is, he is. 
Isn’t he? But these barbarians! Hector, oh my Odys- 
seus, Hector! !—and Andromache! Ah, you don’t know — 
Andromache. The complete mother and housewife, I 
assure you. By the way, talking of that, how is Penelope, 
dear little Penelope ; little, little Penelope, like a dear, dear 
little dwarf? Take me away, Odysseus (throwing her 
arms about his neck). Listen, my suitor, my sad, romantic — 
suitor. .. . If you will take me away, if you will release 
me, you shall have... listen... (whispers) a kiss — 
from the honey of my throat. Oh, Odysseus, you have 
always loved me. Give me back my respectability. 
(Very seriously.) Nothing is any good without that; — 
there’s no ¢aste in anything without that. Listen (she 
sits on his knees, throws her arms about his neck and kisses 
his ear), a kiss from the honey of my throat. (Jumpingup.) — 





a ee oe eek ee ee 


FAR eg et We eee RY, ae ee 





How dare Paris suspect me! 
OpyssEus. Suspect you? s 
HELEN. Yes, he suspects me. Isn’t it appalling, after — 


A MIME 221 


all this misery, this awful war, all for me, and for which I 
shall never forgive myself ? 

OpyssEus. Well, as to that, you know, you are not 
wholly to blame. It had to come. The gods are respon- 
sible. It was their quarrel. The gods are about their 
immortal business. Providence . 

HELEN (offended). It is very nice of you, Odysseus, to 
try to excuse me, but . . . I don’t think you should blame 
Providence. After all, I am the source, I fear, of all this 
terrible affair, in which so many brave men... (She 
turns away her head.) } 

OpyssEus. Oh, come now, I can’t see you crying. As 
a matter of fact, you know, gods or no gods, Helen or no 
Helen, the war had to come. 

HELEN (giving him her hand). Ah, don’t try to comfort 
me with lies. I know I am the whole dispute. 

OpyssEus. As a matter of fact, not at all. It was 
really all about a trade-route. 

HELEN (furious). A what? 

OpyssEus. A trade-route. You see, old Priam, here 
_in Troy, taxed our ships as they passed through the Straits 
to and fro the Euxine. Sometimes he’d hold them up, the 
old pirate. 

HELEN. I know you are lying to comfort me, but I 
don’t think it quite nice of you to suggest that the cause 
of all this fighting and the death of all these splendid men 
is a stupid thing like that. 

OpyssEus. Stupid ? 

HELEN. Men like Hector and Achilles don’t fight for 
trade-routes. 

OpyssEus. No, but you know yourself how stupid they 
are—what barbarians. They will fight for anything, even 
honour. 

HELEN (im ecstasy). My honour. 

OpyssEus. Oh, for anything or nothing. Why Achilles 
is sulking in his tent now. What about, do you think ? 
About a woman. 

HELEN. I don’t think it quite nice of you, Odysseus, 
to say that. Of course they are impossible, and who is 
- this woman ?—some slave, I suppose. But, after all, you 


222 CITIES OF SICILY 


have been one of my suitors. You must have felt—you 
must feel—that I was worth fighting for. Why else are 
you here ? 

OpyssEus. I tell you the war is about a trade-route. 
You are only a pretext. 

HELEN (furious ; throwing open the port, and pointing 
out over the plain, where the battle is joined). A pretext! 
A trade-route! Do you tell me you are killing one another 
for such a thing? What? You, who have loved me? 
O shame! O horror! O men, men, what are you? I 
shall never understand you. (Looking across the plain.) 
How beautiful and how glorious! And, after all, for a 
woman, . . . one understands it. (Slamming to the port.) 
A trade-route! What will you get by your trade-route ? 

OpyssEus. Very little, perhaps. A little gold.... 

HELEN. Bah—a little gold. Will you kill your son for 
a little gold? 

OpyssEus. But it is the freedom of the Straits we . . . 

HELEN. Will you risk your son for a little gold? Tell 
me, then, of your little son. Is he as pretty as ever ? 

OpyssEus. Telemachus was a pretty boy, was he not ? 

HELEN. Not half as pretty as he would have been had 
he been . ... mine. 

OpyssEus. Ours! Helen... . 

HELEN. Tst. Some one is coming. Lie down again 
till I can find a pretext to bring you into the palace. 


CURTAIN. 


It cannot have been long after Stesichorus’ death that 


Himera fell into the hands of a tyrant Terillus, who for 


some reason of which we are ignorant quarrelled with 
Theron of Acragas, who expelled him from Himera. Teril- 
lus then made common cause with the Carthaginians, and 
this was the pretext for the great attack upon Greek Sicily 
which coincided with the Persian advance upon Greece 
proper. Both Hamilcar the Carthaginian here and Xerxes 
the Persian at Salamis were defeated it is said upon the 
same day in 480 B.C. | 








Pe Ce ae ee Beas gee: 


HIMERA 228 


Theron then remained master and contrived after 
various revolutionary outbreaks to turn Himera, by the 
introduction of new colonists, into a Doric city ; this about 
476 B.c. As such it supported Syracuse, with whom its 
relations had become close, in the Athenian Expedition of 
415 B.c., refusing to receive Nikias, and welcoming Gylip- 
pus, the Spartan general, who landed here in his successful 
attempt to succour the besieged city. Indeed the greater 
part of the force with which he entered Syracuse was 
composed of Himerzan citizens. Its entry into this 
quarrel, however, was indirectly the cause of its final des- 
truction. For when after the Athenian defeat the Segestans 
appealed to Carthage, Himera was the first city to be 
attacked and, as it happened, completely destroyed, by the 
Carthaginian expedition which answered that appeal in 
408 B.c. Himera was taken by storm, a large part of the 
inhabitants were put to the sword and not less than 3,000 
who had been taken prisoners were massacred in cold 
blood by Hannibal as a sacrifice to the memory of his 
grandfather Hamilcar who, when defeated here in 480 B.c., 
- had, it will be remembered, cast himself into the fire before 
the altar of Moloch. 

The total destruction of Himera followed, even the 
temples were not spared, and all trace of the city whose 
name was the name of the great Carthaginian defeat, was 
obliterated. In fact Himera was treated by Carthage 
exactly as Carthage was later to be treated by Rome. 
Thus time brings about its shameful revenges. 

Himera was never rebuilt: but a new settlement was 
eventually established on the hill beyond the left bank of 
the river where there were certain hot springs which 
named the new town Thermze—the modern Termini. So 
Himera continued: Thermz in fact has never ceased to be 
inhabited. 

The remains of the ancient city of Therme are con- 
siderable but all of the Roman period. Among them the 
most interesting are those of the ancient therm@e which are 
still used for their original purpose but are now known as 
the Bagni di S. Calégero. There are, too, portions of the. 
Roman aqueduct and the Theatre which was described by 


224 CITIES OF SICILY 


Fazello in the eighteenth century, but not a trace of which 
I could find to-day. 

In the Museo Civico are conserved a few fragments both 
of Himera and of Therme, but the best sculptures found 
on these sites are in the Museum at Palermo. The Museo, 
however, is worth seeing not only for its classical, but also 
for its Arab and medieval antiquities, while in S. Maria 
della Misericordia in Via del Monte there is a fine fifteenth- 
century triptych, over the first altar on the left, of the 
Madonna and Child enthroned, with S. John Baptist and 
S. Michael Archangel on either side and a predella, perhaps 
by Gaspare da Pesaro, and dated 1453. 


The rain was gone. I left Termini on a bright morning 
and made my way eastward across the marsh on the great 
road to Cefali. The Madonie Mountains rose up in massy 
far-away peaks and long crests to the south; on the north 
shone the sea, and ever before me was thrust out the great 
headland of Cefalu upon which, as I now began to see, stood 
a mighty church with twin towers, like some fantastic forma- 
tion of the headland itself visible even from so far. It was 
already evening when at last I came into that city and found 
aroom for the night in a rather sinister ostevia in the Corso. 

Early on the following morning I made my way along the 
narrow street to the great sloping Piazza closed at the top by 
the gigantic building which I had seen from so far. I might 
have been in Normandy: Cefali might have been Caen 
and this great church S. Etienne of the Conqueror. 

Here at any rate the Norman has built—and in Sicily— 
according to his own magnificence and simplicity. Here one 
might think Walter ‘‘of the Mill” has come into his own. 

The church was founded by King Roger in 113r in 
fulfilment of a vow, when, like Odysseus, off this coast on 
his way from Calabria he was in danger of shipwreck. His 
vow was that he would build a church wherever he got 
safely ashore. He landed here, and here in the very next 
year he began this vast Cathedral towering up under the 
sheer cliff, and, as it might seem really a part of it, its great 


towers but isolated pinnacles of its stone, its gaunt fagade 


EES SE a ONE Fe oe ye ne, ey eee me 


CEFALU 225 


but a part of its sheer face, its harsh weather-beaten height 
only isolated from the parent rock. 

So it seems when first you stand and gaze up atit. But 
look more closely and everywhere you will discern in its 
great Norman framework details which suggest the Saracen 
and the Greek, who it might seem were, in the Sicily of that 
time, alone capable of building at all, or at any rate, such a 
work as this. 

The church is a Latin cross, 230 feet long. The western 
front rises from vast blocks of hewn stone, a curiously 
simple, almost harsh, cliff of stone, with a great pillared 
portico receding between two huge square projecting four 
storied towers, as Norman as anything can be in Normandy 
or England. And yet how curiously mannered, how 
elaborate is that great western portal, how strange those 
lovely embattled turrets, windowed too, and one of them 
with a delightful pointed arcarding too elaborate and too 
delicate you might think for the North. The walls of the 
portico too they say were once covered with mosaic. Walk 
round the church: the huge central apse towering up 
between the two small apses north and south, the lofty 
transepts with their square ends, everywhere covered with 
a light arcading borne on slender round coupled shafts 
right up to the cornice, and again and again and again the 
pointed window : it is as though the gaunt Norman frame- 
work had been carefully overlayed and penetrated by a 
genius far other, lighter and more supple, delighting in 
beauty more than strength, in subtilty more than simplicity. 

And within the secret isno longer asecret. The Norman 
is here scarcely discernible. The great nave is upborne by 
fifteen antique columns of granite and one of cipollino with 
Corinthian capitals, and everything is devoted to an effect 
of lightness and height, the church soars up almost like a 
Gothic building, and yet no Gothic church of the North 
ever had this effect of space, of light, of colour. 

Of colour . . . The whole apse is marvellously encrusted 
with lovely mosaics, shining with gold, beautiful with all 
the colours of the rainbow. In the semidome is a gigantic 
bust of Our Lord in benediction—far lovelier than the similar 
figure at Monreale. Beneath is a figure of the Madonna, 


226 CITIES OF SICILY 


and all about angels, saints and prophets, kings and war- 
riors, bishops and judges. 

These mosaics were executed, as the inscription declares, 
in the year 1148. They are thus the earliest in Sicily. 
Contemporary with them but certainly to-day, perhaps 
on account of restoration, inferior to them, are the mosaics 
of the Palatine Chapel. Better than these and perhaps 
equal to the mosaics of Cefalu are those of La Martorana, 
executed at about the same time ; while those at Monreale 
are altogether inferior. 

No doubt here at Cefalti as in La Martorana the whole 
church was once covered with mosaics ; but only those in the 
semidome, the apse and the sanctuary now remain. The 
semidome, as I have said, is filled on a grey background 
with a colossal bust of the Saviour in benediction between 
four angels and medallions of Melchizedek and Hosea on 
the side walls. Beneath are the twelve apostles and 
beneath again the Blessed Virgin in the midst, with pro- 
phets, elders and saints. Nothing more glorious remains 
in all Sicily than these magnificent Byzantine works. Here 
Greek art, the Greek genius, manifests itself for the last 
time in a sunset of colour, of gold and precious stones, 
harmonious and lovely, and with its wonted genius for 
decoration. No other people has created great master- 
pieces across two thousand years: yet something like that 
separates the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus from the 
Cathedral of Cefali: more than 1,500 years stand between 
the frieze of the Parthenon and these last Greek works in 
Sicily. The religion in whose service these works were 
made was more than a thousand years old when they 
appear to enlighten and adorn it: and they are, or should 
be, as enduring and indestructible as the work the Greek 
genius did in the service of the older religion. After all, 
nearly everything we know and feel in regard to both ~ 
religions is their work in so far as it has any antiquity. 
Into what byways have we not wandered, in what squalor 
have we not dwelt, without them; and always with 
nostalgia, and a continual attempt at return. 

Little else in the church much concerned me. I noted 
the two thrones of marble encrusted with mosaics at the 


~ 





AT SELINUNTE 


LEMPLE “Ci. 





nN 


CEFALU 





CEFALU 227 


entrance of the sanctuary, the one inscribed ‘‘ Sedes Regia ”’ 
the other “‘Sedes Episcopalis,”’’ and the beautiful twelfth- 
_ century font. Then I wandered out, and presently came 
into the beautiful but half ruined cloisters, only less lovely 
than those at Monreale. 

Then I returned to the inn, which did not seem much less 
forbidding now at midday than it had done on the previous 
evening. After a wretched lunch I set out by the Vicolo 
dei Saraceni to climb to the summit of the great precipitous 
rock in the shadow of which the Cathedral stands. 

There on the top of old was founded the Greek Cephalce- 
dium, probably a fortress of Himera, certainly never a Greek 
settlement, which got its name from the headland (xepady) 
upon which it stood. Diodorus speaks of it as just that, 
at the time of the Carthaginian expedition under Himilco 
in 396 B.c., and it appears in the Roman itineraries. In- 
deed it seems to have continued to exist, probably on 
account of its harbour, till Roger I built his Cathedral on 
the rocks below and transferred the inhabitants from 
their inaccessible height to the shelter of his great church. 

Some remains of the ancient city reward one for a 
laborious climb, as well as a wonderful view of sea and sea- 
coast, island and mountain. And there are remnants of a 
Saracen cistern and a castle, as well as what was said to be 
the débris of a Temple of Artemis. But the most curious 
monument still remaining in that lofty place is a house or 
palace of more than one storey with various apartments 
built of large blocks of limestone in a style usually called 
Cyclopean. Rude mouldings rather Doric in character are 
hewn in these vast blocks and the whole makes a building 
of an absolutely unique kind. Is it Homeric? Is it 
Minoan, Mycenzan or Sicanian or Sikelian? Prehistoric 
it certainly is, perhaps the only house left in the Mediter- 
ranean from before the beginning of history. It certainly 
brings to the mind, one scarcely knows exactly why, the 
very atmosphere and life of the Odyssey. Over such a 
threshold Odysseus passed to sit unrecognized with the 
noisy suitors ; in such a palace Penelope waited and wove ; 
one almost expects to see the dog Argos peer round the 
great hewn door-posts looking for his master : under such a 


228 CITIES OF SICILY 


tremendous lintel perhaps Athena herself has bowed her 
head. It intrigues one more than the Cathedral below and 
in so stony a place covers everything with those memories 
which are none the less for being only the memories of a tale 
that is told. 

From that height, as I sat beside the threshold I looked 
out along the shore whither I was bound. Perhaps I was 
weary of the many miles I had come and saw those before me 
without the usual pleasure and expectation ; but it was 
the inn of Cefali which really intimidated me. For I 
argued, if nothing but this wretched osteria is to be found in 
a place so famous as Cefalu, so frequented, so constantly 
visited from Palermo and with so much to offer the travel- 
ler, what is before me? What must I expect to find in 


the little unknown places I had hoped to visit? The 


thought had been with me all day. It was now necessary 
to face it. 

I had set out determined to visit every site of every 
Greek city upon this northern shore which the Greeks 
called and rightly xadddxrn, ‘the beautiful shore,” the 
beautiful place where the waves break. I had numbered 
them all and had their names by heart ; from west to east 
they ran like a song: 


Therme, Himera, Cephalcedium, 

Apollonia, Alaesa, Amestratus, 

Calacte, Agathyrna, Aluntium 
Tyndaris, Myle. 


It was. a little lame it is true, but it served. Such were ; 


the cities of the north coast and all were to be seen, that is 


to say their sites were known, and modern towns still — 
bore their names or at least represented them: as Pol- — 
lina, Apollonia; Mistretta, Amestratus; Sant’ Agata, — 


Agathyrna; San Marco d’Alunzio, Aluntium. ~ 


How was all this to be managed? Well, it couldn’t be 


managed. I was no longer a candidate as of old for native 
experiments in cookery ; I was no longer as once so enthralled 
by the dream in my mind, that I was rather unaware of, 


than indifferent to, the dirt, the vermin, the hostile curiosity — 
of the inhabitants, which seem inseparable from every — 


Payee Sue te 





HARDNESS OF THE WAY 229 


archeological pilgrimage. I revolted, or rather I funked 
it, the daily effort to eat the uneatable, to sleep, to rest — 
where both were impossible, to face the suspicious curiosity 
of unkindly ignorance. So I shall never see Apollonia, 
Alaesa, Amestratus, Calacte; the beautiful shore I shall 
never tread ; Aluntium, into which Verres refused to climb 
it was sosteep, I shallnever reach. Alas, why are there not 
what Baedeker used to call “‘ tolerable ”’ inns near all these 
places? ‘‘ Tolerable ’’ used to mean in Tuscany “ delight- 
ful,’ a house undegraded by the tourist, unspoiled by 
parties of sightseers, an inn to keep in a secret corner of the 
mind, where your host gave you the local news in the even- 
ing, your hostess cooked a meal fit for Lucullus, and her 
daughters saw to your comfort. Clean? Cleaner I will 
swear than anything has been in England since the Spoli- 
ation, and cheaper than anything has been in England 
since the Conquest. 

But here . . . I cannot face battalions of twinkling fleas, 
I cannot face vermin that move in mass formation. I am 
weary of goat: I am all for Arabian artichokes and Greek 
lettuces. I would not willingly pass the English turnip- 
top, no nor even the mere “ greens’”’ of my home. Why 
does Sicily know none of them—Sicily the home of Demeter, 
once the garden of the Mediterranean, the granary of Rome? 
But goat in all guises and disguises, and mostly plain plain 
goat—my gorge rises, I refuse . . . And so I took the 
train from Cefali for Milazzo, the only town along this long 
and exquisite coast between Termini and Messina where 
Baedeker notes 


ALBERGO E TRATTORIA .. . well spoken of... 


Even from the train that coast I could see bore out its 
name: not a mile of it that did not call for admiration, 
sometimes as at Calcate itself, at Capo d’Orlando, at Brolo, 
at Capo di Calava, at Tindaro and finally at Milazzo it 
seemed to beggar description in the late afternoon light, 
the sea changing colour every minute from sapphire 
through the tenderest blue to wine colour, to violet, to a 
cold grey when the sun was gone. 

As for Milazzo it lies at the base of a low peninsula and 

16 


- 


230 CITIES OF SICILY 


is alla garden. Nothing seems to remain of the old Greek 
city, but you may walk through olives and orchards and 
shrubberies of myrtle—amantes litora myrtos, as Virgil tells 
us—all the way out to the lanterna at the end of the low 
peninsula which is about five miles long, the violet sea 
breaking softly on both sides, and then look back at Sicily, 
at the coast beautiful, or forward at the floating islands of 
/Eolus, lofty Vulcano, only 15 miles away, with its white 
feather of smoke, larger Lipari the capital of the archipelago, 
Isola Salina, which the ancients called Didyme the twins, 
because of its two cones of extinct volcanoes, Filicuri, 
which the Greeks called the palmy, Alicuri which they called 


the healthy, and Pinaria with its satellites. Altogether — 


Milazzo is a jolly place where every tiniest bay has its name 
and every rounded headland too. The only thing one 





os ae 
7 < sibs ic a al 
ee Sa ee ee a ee Ee ee pee 


could have against it is that they have made a prison of — 


Charles V’s Castle, which occupies the site of the Greek 
acropolis : but stone walls could not a prison make in such 
a place as this and beside such a sea. 

The Greek city of Myle stood on the base of this penin- 
sula as Milazzo does. It was an establishment rather than 
a colony, I suspect, of Zankle (Messina), and was erected 
here where there is a good harbour to secure Zankle’s 


communications upon the north coast. It was certainly 
founded before Himera in 648 B.c., but the first historical — 


notice we have of it is found in 427 B.c. when it was attacked 
by the Athenian fleet then at Rhegium. It was defended 
by Messina but was taken. It never seems to have had 


any separate existence at all and its relation to Messina 
seems to have been much the same as that of Acre to — 


Syracuse. 
The long peninsula forms the western headland of the 


fine gulf of Milazzo. This gulf is famous in history for 
two great actions. The first of these can hardly be called — 


a naval action. It was a great fight at sea between the 
Roman fleet under Duillius and the Carthaginians, in the 
First Punic War, in which the Roman was victorious. It 


was a most astonishing result, for the Carthaginians were ~ 
the finest sailors in the world and the Romans about the ~ 
worst. Rome hated and feared the sea, therefore she q 





MILAZZO 231 


tried, and successfully, to turn a naval action into a land 
fight to her advantage. Even her sea-sick soldiers could 
fight on terra firma. On terra firma they fought. For the 
Roman artificers had contrived covvi—in other words, means, 
of holding and boarding the enemies’ ships. It seems that 
in the forepart of the ship the Romans fixed perpendicu- 
larly a round pole 24 feet high ; at the top was a pivot upon 
which a ladder was set 36 feet long and 4 broad; at the 
end was an iron spike, and the ladder was lowered by a 
rope so that it overreached the enemies’ bulwarks and the 
spike was driven into the opposing ship. The enemy was 
thus held while across the ladder, or up and down it, the 
Roman “sailors? swarmed aboard the Carthaginian and 
fought it out in the waist. The covvus was thus a sort of 
magnificent grappling iron and boarding ladder. It gave 
the Roman the victory in this engagement, which goes 
to show that nothing is ever certain in war, which is an 
art and not a science, and a game of chance much more 
than an art. No one in the world at that time could have 
believed that the Romans would defeat the Carthaginians 
at sea; nor would they ever have done so but for this 
very lubberly contrivance. 

The second affair for which this bay is famous is a 
naval action between Romans: Agrippa, who commanded 
the fleet of Octavian, here defeated the ships of Sextus 
Pompeius, 36 B.C. 

I determined to visit Tyndaris from Milazzo for I could 
hear of nowhere to sleep there ; and to make this excursion 
more delightful I determined to go by sea, getting a boat 
at the tonnara. It was a sail of some two hours or more 
across the bay in sight of that lovely shore under the great 
mountains of the Peloritan range. 

Tyndaris is an amazing thing: a granite cliff a thousand 
feet high rising sheer out of the sea. You land in the 
ancient port beyond the Santuario della Madonna di Tin- 
daro and scramble up the steep hillside to find the ruins of 
the old city wall, a wonderfully preserved Theatre, various 
mosaic pavements and other remains: altogether Tyndaris 
is one of the places most well worth seeing upon this 
northern coast. 


232 CITIES OF SICILY 


Tyndaris gets its noble name from the Peloponnesians 
who were its first colonists. They named it in honour of 
their native divinities the Tyndaride, the Dioscuri, Castor 
and Polydeuces, the brothers of Helen of Troy. Thus 
Tyndaris was a purely Greek city, one of the latest, as it 
happens, to be founded in Sicily, having been established 
by the elder Dionysius in 395 B.c. after the failure of the 
Carthaginian attempt against Syracuse. The original 
settlers whom he established there were those exiles who 
had been driven from the Peloponnese by the Spartans 
after the close of the Peloponnesian War. These had first 
been placed at Messina, but as the Spartans objected to 
this, Dionysius transferred them to Tyndaris. They 
welcomed new colonists and very soon they numbered 
5,000 citizens, and Tyndaris was thus a place of consider- 
able importance. In fact its enormous strength must 
always have brought it into consideration. It might seem 
to occupy upon the Tyrrhene Sea much the same position as 
Tauromenium upon the Ionian, and upon one occasion we 
find Hieron in his attack upon Messina in 269 B.c. resting 
his position upon Tyndaris on his left and Tauromenium 
on his right. It was a strategic point of the first import- 
ance, and probably for this reason it enjoyed as long a life 
as Tauromenium, played a part in the Punic wars, was a 
considerable place in Cicero’s time, was looted by Verres, 
is still alluded to by Strabo as a city, and by Pliny asa 
colonia, which suggests that it had received a colony under ~ 
Augustus as we read too in an inscription : Colonia Augusta 
Tyndaritanorum. It is Pliny, too, who tells us of the 
calamity which fell upon the city, the results of which are 
in some sort still visible. He declares that half of it was 
swallowed up by the sea, and to-day you may still see — 
where the ruined walls end abruptly above the sheer face 
of the cliff, here split, perhaps by an earthquake, and a 
vast part hurled into the sea. a 

I had toiled up that steep hillside in the hope of — 
finding, as in so many other places in Sicily, Greek 
ruins. I found none. Ruins there were in plenty and © 
of considerable interest, but they one and all proved — 


to be of the Roman time, even the Theatre being, like — 





TYNDARIS 233 


that at Taormina, at best a Roman work upon Greek 
foundations. 

Still I was able to trace the walls of the city ; I went by 
the roads that once upon a time the exiles from the Pelopon- 
nesian Chersonese must have used, I passed in and out of 
the two gates, I stumbled about the many ruins among the 
cactus and myrtles and wondered what that might be which 
has two fine stone arches and is obviously of the Roman 
time. It resembles, or rather it reminds one, of the Roman 
amphitheatre at Syracuse. I lingered in the Theatre. 

This is not a large building: according to Baedeker its 
internal diameter is 212 feet. It looks smaller. The 
theatrum proper is divided into nine cunei, and there were 
at least twenty-seven tiers of seats. But as usual the 
stage is gone. Indeed I begin to doubt the existence of 
the stage. I wonder whether Sophocles has ever been 
played here? I should doubt it. We know that under the 
Romans even the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens was the 
scene of gladiatorial shows: the Romans were barbarians 
and, except the few, had little taste for Greek literature. 
They were themselves totally incapable of producing a 
tragedy, and even their epic poetry is slavishly imitated 
from those whom they conquered it is true, but who were 
their masters in all the finer things of life, in art as in philo- 
sophy. Probably here in this beautiful place above the sea 
the crowd was used to make a Roman holiday... 

I eluded such thoughts as these by scrambling up to 
the Telegrafo and it was there I took farewell of Sicily. 

Before me, sleeping on the Tyrrhene Sea, lay the A¢olian 
Isles, from smoking Vulcano close at hand to smoking 
Stromboli far away, lying off the Italian shore: islands 
of the winds, the floating isles, past which the Nereids bore 
in their white hands Jason’s Argo, to which Odysseus came 
to beg for a wind to bear him home. To the north-east, 
closing the wide bay, lay the long low peninsula of Myle, 
that was called the Island of the Sun and all the fair shore 
between. To the west stood up the Capo di Calava under 
Monte Pezzecatori and higher still Monte Giojosa. Behind 
me rose the Mountains of Neptune, before them the mighty 
Rocca di Novara; and there far to the south, hovering in 





284 CITIES OF SICILY = 


the sky, appeared the ethereal snow-crowned cone of 
10,000 feet in the blue air. | 

Night came swiftly, as it were in a moment, as 
sailed across the Bay of Tyndaris, back to Milazzo. 
on the morrow I was in Messina, and not without ma: 
a backward look, embarked for home. = 





INDEX 


ABDURAHMAN, 206 

Acesines, stream, see Alcantara 

Achemenides, 30 

Aci Castello, 25, 27, 30 

Aci Reale, 25, 26, 27, 31 

Aci S. Antonio, 26 

Aci Trezza, 29 

Acis, stream, 25, 26 

Acis and Galatea, 25-6, 37 

Acre (Palazzolo, q.v.), 48, 54, 
66, 74, 102 sqq., 116 

Acrean Rock, the, 63, 106 sqq. 

Acragas, see Girgenti 

Acragas, river, 120, 121, 131 

fégadian Isles, 157, 158, 159 

#égates, the, Roman victory, 154 

fZolian Isles, 3, 5, 7, 8, 27, 210, 
Zio. 333,230; 233 

#Eschylus, 51, 56, 57, 70, 87, 88, 
93, 102, L110, 117, 118 

Agathocles, 17, 65, 70, 73, 170, 
216 

Alaesa, 228, 229 

Alcamo, 167, 168 

Alcantara (Acesines) river and 
valley, 15, 16, 18, 24, 


bia 25, 20, 35, 40 
Alcibiades, 32, 35, 57, 58, 59-60, 
102 


Alcmene, 130 

Alicuri, Isle of, 230 

Alpheus, the, 71, 72 

Altarello, 207 

Amestratus, 228, 229 

Amphinomus and Anapias, 36 

Anapus, river and valley, 52, 53, 
65, 68, 72, 78, 85, 89, 
90, 92, 98, 99, 104-5, 
107, III 

Anchises, death of, 157 

Andron of Catana, 36 


Angell, Mr., 143, 146, 147 sqq., 
201 


Antiochenos, Admiral Giorgios, 
IQI, 205 

Antipater of Sidon, 35 

Antisthenes, 125 

Aphrodite Anadyomene, statue, 
at Syracuse, 75-6 

Apollocrates, 64 

Apollonia, 228, 229 

Aragon tombs, Ducmo, Catania, 


a 

Archias, 54 

Archimedes, 66, 77 

Arethusa, Fountain of, 71-2 

Aristonous and Psystilus, 121 

Asinarus, river, 63, 108 

Athenian Expedition against 
Syracuse, 16-17, 32, 
35, 48, 49, 57 S9q-, 79, 
73, 78, 83, 88, 89, 90, 
103, 106 sqq., 125, 142, 
153, 169, 223 

Augusta, 45, 49, 90 


BACCHIAD2, the, 54 
Bacchylides, 56 

Bagheria, villas of, 212 sqqi 
Bagnara, 3 

Balestrate, 168 

Bartolo, Gesualdo di, 116 
Bartolo, Giovanni di, of Siena, 


34 
Bartolo, Taddeo di, 203 
Bellini, Vincenzo: tomb, 34 
Bernini, 81 
Bérard, Victor, 28, 156 
Bianca, Punta, 120 
Biblian wine, 113 
Bove, Valle del, Etna, 43 
Brolo, 229 


235 


236 


Biccheri, 111 
Piano di, III 
Buscemi, r1t 
Butler, Samuel, 28, 113, 156, 162, 
163 


CALACTE, 228, 229 
Calatafimi, 162-3, 164, 169 
Calava, Capo di, 229, 233 
Callipolis, 117 
Caltabellota, 139 
Caltagirone, I10, III, 112, 116, 
208 
Camarina, 17, 54, 55, I17 
Camogli, Bartolommeo da, 203 
Campala, promotory, II 
Canicattini, 103 
Carthage and Carthaginian inva- 
sions, 17, 39-40, 55, 58, 
63, 64 sqq., 92, 120, 
122, 123, 125, 128, 133, 
138, I4I, 142, 150, 153, 
169, 170, 215, 222, 223, 
232 
Casmenae, 54 
Caso di Sciacca, 139 
Cassibili, stream, 108, I10 
Castellamare, 167 
Gulf of, 169, 212 
Castelvetrano, 139, 
149, 163 
Castiglione, 24 
Castrogiovanni, 45, 177, 179 
Catalfano, Monte, 211, 213, 215 
Catana, see Catania 
Catania, 1-2, 25, 30, 31 Sqq., 45, 
46 sqq., 67, 89, 102, 209 
Amphitheatre, 36 
Biscari Palace, 34 
Cathedral, 33 sqq. 
Piano de, 25, 46-7, 112 
Piazza Stesichoro, 36 
Via Etnea, 33 
Cattolica, 126, 138 
Cava, di Spampanato, 106 sqq. 
Cefalu, 186, 189, I9I, 213, 215, 
224 Sqq., 228, 229 
Centoripa, 41 
Chalcidian Colonies, see Leon- 
tinoi, Messina, Naxos 


140, 147, 


CITIES OF SICILY 


Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, 


I 
‘Charybdis, 4, 5, 6, 8,9 


Chiesazza, the, 216 

Cicero, 67, 70, 77, 83, 87, 170-1, 
219 225 

Clashing Rocks, the, 3, 8 

Cleomenes, I15 

Climiti, Monti, 52, 90, 100, IoT 

Cofano, headland, 160 

Conca d’Oro, the, 193, 206, 207, 
210, 213 

Corleone, Simone da, 194 

Crimissus, Battle of, 65, 126, 169 

Cyane, fount and stream of, 75, 


93 Sqq. 
Cyclops, Rocks of the, 27 sqq. 


DZDALUS, 138 

Demarete, 56, 122 

Demeter, 46, 47, 76, 82, 96, 97, 
229 

Didyme, Isle of, 230 

Diodorus Siculus, 39-40, 47, 56, 
68, 70, 73, 83, 116, 125, 
127-8, 133, 159, 215, 
217 

Diogenes Lertius, 123 

Dion, 64 

Dionysius of Syracuse, 17, 32, 
39, 51, 63, 64, 68, 69, 
89, OI Sgqg., 100, 125, 
126,138,142,150, 153-4, 
170, 215, 232 

Dionysius, the younger, 64 

Dorian Colonies (see Syracuse),50 

Drepanum, see Trapani 

Duillius, 230-1 


EGESTA, see Segesta 

Elymi, the, 153, 159, 168, 215 

Empedocles, 41,121, 123, 124,135 

Enna, 68, 97, 177 

Erbasso, III 

Eryx, Mount, 45, 158, 159 

Etna, Mount, II, 12, 15, 19, 21, 
24 $9q., 27 Sq-, 31, 325 
36, 37-8 sqq., 40, 41 
$qq., 90, 93, IOI, 102, 
III, 124, 135, 158, 236 





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— 


INDEX 


Euripides, 27; 57, 79, 113 
Evaenetus, 56 
Evil Eye, the, 197 sqq. 


FaLconeE, Monte, 159 
Faro, the, 3, 9 
Fata Morgana, 7-8, 12 
Filicuri, Isle of, 230 
Fiumefreddo, the, 26, 169 
Fiume Grande, 216, 217 
Floridia, 63, 89, 90, 103, 106, 
' 107, 108 
Fountain of Arethusa, 71-2 
of Cyane, 75, 93 sqq. 
Frederick II, Emperor, 49, 183, 
188, 206 
Frumente, Monte, 44 


GAGGERA, river and valley, 162, 
163, 164, 165, 169 
Gagini, the, 116, 151, 160, 180 
Antonello, 151, 153 
Antonio, 196 
Galatea, 25, 26, 34, 36, 37 
Gela, 16, 17, 54, 55, 95, 75, 
77, 110, 117-18, 121, 
122, 145 
Geloi, Campi, 112, 116 
Gelon, 16, 54 sqq., 70, 85, 87, 
I22, 216 
Giardini, 24 
Giarre, 30 
Giarretta, river, 38 
Giojosa, Monte, 233 
Giovanni di Niccold, 203 
Girgenti, 31, 55, 67, 77, 110 sqq., 
IIQ, I2I sgq., 134 $qq., 
140, 163, 179, 180 
Cathedral, 134 
Museum, 133 
Porta Aurea, 129, 133 
Porta Empedocle, 120, 130, 
135, 136, 137 
Temples, 118, 119, 120, 172 sqq. 
Gorgias, 48 
Grammichele, 112 ~ 
Granitola, Punta di, 141 
Grifone, Monte, 206 
Grotta, the, church of, La Pace, 3 
del Palumbe, 27 


237 


Grotta, cont. 
della Sibilla Cumana, Marsala, 
155-6 
di S. Rosalia, 209-10 
Gylippus, 57, 58, 60 


HALycus, river, 126, 138, 150, 
215 
Hamilcar, 55, 122, 158, 222, 223 
Hannibal, 144, 145, 153, 154, 223 
Hanno, 126 
Harris and Angell, Messrs., 143, 
146, 201 
Hauteville, Tancred de, 178-9 
William of the Iron Arm, 179 
Helen of Troy, 12, 35, 115, 217, 
218 sqq., 222 
Helorine Road, 63, 108, 110 
Helorus, 66, 110 
Henry VI, Emperor, 183, 188, 
194 
Heraclea Minoa, 126, 138, 139 
Herakles, 97, 130, 138, 150 
Hermes, promontory of, 161 
Hermocrates, 144 
Herondas of Cos, 218 
Herodotus, 52, 53, 95, 96, 115 
Hicetas, 65 
Hieron I, 16, 17, 56, 73, 85 
Hieron II, 65-6, 73, 78, 85, 87, 
232 
Hieronymus, 66 
Himera, 55, 63, 68, 122, 138, 200, 
216, 222, 228, 230 
Battle of, 55, 122, 216, 223 
Bay of, 215, 216 
Himilcar, 39 
Himilico, 63, 170 
Hippocrates of Gela, 16, 54, 66, 
127 
Homer, 6, 8-9, II, 12, 27 S9q., 95 
Hyblean Mountains, 48, 49, 52, 
90, IOI, 103, III 
Hymettus, 101, 113 
Hypsas, River, 120, 133, 141 


IspRAHIM ibn Ahmad, 177 
Iliad, the, 93, 164, 167 
Inice, Mont’, 167 
Totaline wine, 113 


238 


Ismarus, 
II4-15 
Isola d’ Aci, 29 
Isola Bella, 13 
Isola Salina, 230 
Ispica, Val d’, 104 


KAIRAWAN, 177, 185 
Kimon, 56 


LAESTRYGONES, the, 5, 135 
Lamachus, 57, 58, 59, 61 
Latomie of Acre, 103, 105 
of Syracuse, 55, 58, 63, 78 sqq. 
Laurana, Francesco, 139, 155, 
188 
Lentinian fields and lake, 45 
Leontinoi or Lentini, 16, 35, 37, 
47, 48, 58, 63, 65, 66, 
_ 14 117 
Plain of, 25 
Stream, 47 
Licata, 110, 118 
Lilybeum (see also Marsala), 
I4I, 142,152, 153, 154, 
158, 159, 172 
Linguaglossa, 25 
Liotta, Antonio: tomb, 155 
Lipari Islands, see olian Isles 
Lissus, stream, 47 
Lorenzetti, Pietro, 203 
Luna family, 139 
Lycophron, 217 
Lysimeleia, marsh, 61, 68, 77 


MABUSE, 203 

Madonie Mountains, 45, 234 

Madonna of the Letter, Messina, 
I, 6 

Mago, 39, 40, 63 

Mahomet, 150 

Malaterra, 179 

Malea, 5 

Malta Channel, 55 

Mamertine wine, 113 

Manfred, 183, 184 

Maniaces, George, 73, 150, 178 

Maraglio, river and valley, 116 

Marathon, 118 

Marcellus, 49, 66, 67, 70, 90, 92 


Thracian wine of, 


CITIES OF SICILY 


Maron, 114 
Marsala, 152, 159 
Duomo, I 
Grotta della Sibilla Cumana 
at, 155-6 
Museum, 155 
Marsala wine, 113, II4-15, 152, 


155 
Matthew, Vice-Chancellor, 187 
Maupassant, Guy de, 75 «© 
Mazzara, 151, 177 
Val di, 149 Sqq., 177 
Mazarus, river, 141 
Mediterranean Sea, 6, 28; 53, 
176 
Megalopolis, theatre of, 87 
Megara, 48, 49, 55, 56, 58, 59, 66, 
Q2, IOI, 124, I4I 
Gulf of, 48 
Melians, the, 57 
Mellili, ror, 108 
Memmi, Lippo, 203 
Menelaus, 217, 219, 220 


Mericus, 66 
Messina, formerly Zankle, 1 sqq. 
22, 39, 45, I17, 149, 


178, 179, 180, 216, 230, 


234 
Cathedral, 1, 2-3 
Churches and ex-Convents, 
21-2 
Earthquakes, I, 2 
Harbour, 3 
Palaces, 21 
Strait of, 5-6, 9, IO-II, 53 
Tidal wave of 1783, 11 
Melkarth, Temple of, Girgenti, 
I21 
Milazzo, 229, 230-1, 234 
Gulf of, 212, 230-1 
Milton, 71-2, 97 
Mimes of Sophron, 56 
Minos, 138 
Mistretta, 228, 229 
Mola, 13, 14, 15, 21-2 
Moloch, 121, 150, 153 
Monreale, 207 
Benedictine Monastery, 191 
Cathedral, 191 sqq., 225, 226, 
227 





PN a ae ee ee eee Oe 





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wt. 


INDEX 


Montagna, 116 

Montagnolo, La, Etna, 44 

Montallegro, 138 

Montaperto, Bishop, 151 

Montelepre, 168 

Montepulciano wine, 113 

Mosaics, 189, I9I, 204, 
226-7 

Motya, 63, 152 sqq., 159, 215 

Myle, 228, 230 

Myron, 133 

Myrtillus, 201 


225, 


Nano, Cecco di, 194 

Nava, Cavaliere Saverio Lando- 
lina, 74 

Naxos, 15, 16, 18, 35, 48, 54, 59, 


II 

Nelson, Admiral Lord, 114, 
148 

Neptune, Mountains of, 233 

Netum, 66 

Nikias, 49, 57 sqq., 103, 106 
Ss 


94: 
Normans (see also Robert Guis- 
card, & Roger I), 6, 180 
Noto, 63, 95, I10 
Val di, 177, 180 
Novara, Rocca di, 233 


ODYSSEUS, I, 3 59q., 27 5qq., 113, 
114, 218 sqq., 233 

Odyssey, the (see also Homer, & 
Odysseus), 114, 156 

Ognina, 27, 30 

Olympieum, the, on the Anapus, 
78, 94, 98, 107 

at Athens, 128, 129 
Orientalism, Palermitan, 174 


Sqq- 

Orlando, Capo d’, 229 

Orsi, Professor Paolo, 74, 104 

Ortygia, Island of (see under 
Syracuse) 

Ovid, 27, 37, 97 


PALAGONIA, Prince of, 213, 
214-15 ~ 


239 


Palazzolo (see also Acre), 54, 102 
$qq., 110, III 
Museo Judica, 104 
Palermitani, Monti, 167 
Palermo, 31, 55, 95, I12, 140, 
143, 146, 150, 175 sqq., 
179, 180 sqq., 184 sqq., 
193, 197 Sqq., 204, 205, 
207, 212 
Archbishopric of, 186, 187 
Casa Normanna, 194 
Chiaramonte collection of 
pictures, 203 
Churches, 189, 190-1, 194 sqq., 
20 
S. Agata, 196-7 
S. Agostino, 195 
SS. Annunziata, 196 
S. Antonio Abbate, 194 
S. Cataldo, 185, 190, I91 
210 
S. Caterina, 197 
Cathedral, 176, 186sqq., 210 


S. Chiara, Palermo, 197 

S. Cristina la Vetera, 195 

S. Domenico, 196 

S. Francesco, 195 

S. Giorgio of the Genoese, 
197 

S. Giovanni degli Eremiti, 
185, 190, 210 

S. Giovanni dei Lebbrosi, 
205 

Incoronata, Church of, 
194, 195 


La Maddalena, 144 

La Magione, 194 

La Martovana, 190, Ig1, 
193, 205, 210, 220, 237 

S. Maria dell’ Ammiraglio, 
I51I, I9I 

S. Maria della Catena, 196 

S. Maria di Gest, 81, 207 

S. Maria Nuova, 196 

S. Matteo, 194 

S. Ninfa, 189 

SS. Rosario, Oratorio del, 
196 

Santo Spirito, 195 

S. Zita, Oratorio di, 196 


240 


Palermo, cont. 
Cistercian Monastery, 195 
Conca d’Oro (q9.v.), 213 
Convento de’ Cappucini, 196 
Corso, 194, 196 
Gardens, 207 sqq. 
Marina, 175-6 
Museum, 143, 200 sqq.,216, 224 
Palazzo Palatini, 184 
Chapel of, 188-9, 191, 210, 
226 
Porta Felice, 196 
Porto Mazzara, 190 
Porta Nuova, 204, 205 
Quattro Canti, 194 
Via del Incoronata, 194, 197 
Via Valverde, 196 
Villas outside, 204 sqq. 
Belmonte, 209 
Cuba, La, 184, 204, 205 
Cubola, La, 204,205 
Favara, La, 184, 204, 206 
Favorita, La, 209 
Giulia (La Flora), 208 
Scalea, 209 
Sofia, 209 
Sperlinga, 208 
Tasca, 207-8 
Trabia, 208 
Ziza, La, 184, 204, 205 
Palermo, Bay or Gulf of, 174, 
209, 212, 213 
Palma, 118 
Palmi, 3 
Panormus (seé also Palermo), 55, 
149, 153, 159, 210, 216 
Pantalica, 100, 104-5, III 
Pindar, 38-9, 51, 56, 69, 122, 
216 


Pantano, 3 

Pantelleria, Island of, 160 

Papyrus, 72, 94, 95, 96 

Partinico, 168 

Passaro, Capo, 45 

Paterno, 42 

Pellegrino, Monte, 209, 210, 211, 
213 

Peloritani Mountains, 13, 24 

Peloro, Capo, 3, 212 

Pentapolis, see Syracuse 


CITIES OF SICILY 


Perolla family, 139 

Pesaro, Gaspare da, 224 

Persephone, 46, 47, 68, 75, 82, 
96, 97, 98 

Peter, King of Aragon, 184 

Pezzecatori, Monte, 233 

Philistis, 51 

Philoxenus, 64 

Phoenicians, the (see also Cartha- 
ginians), 6, II, 12, 29, 
152, 215 

Pii Fratres, the, of Catana, 36 

Pinaria, Isle and Islets, 230 

Pisa, Bonanno of, 192 

Pispini, stream, 169 

Planctae, the (see also Clashing 
Rocks), 5, 8 

Platini, stream, 138 

Plato, 64, 70, 102, II5 

Plemmyrion, 49, 53, 61, 62, 68, 
73, 85, 91 

Pliny, 40, 232 

Polichne, 68 

Olympieum on, 78, 98, 99 

Pollan wine, 113 

Pollina, 228, 229 

Polyphemus, 25, 26, 27 sqq., 37 


39 
Pottery, prehistoric, at Calta- 


girone, 116 

Publius Scipio, Africanus, 154, 
170, 172 

Pyrrhus, 17, 154, 170 


QUARRIES of Syracuse, see Lato- 
mie 
Quintianus, 34 


RAGUSA, IIO 

Rama, Capo di, 167 

Rametta, 150 

Ransom, The, of Hector (Diony- 
sius), 64, 93 

Reggio, 3, 7, 48, 59, 179, 230 

Ribera, 138 ‘ 

Rinazzo, Monte, 44 

Riposto, 30 

Robbia, Andrea della, 157 

Robert, Duke, of Normandy, 
1789- 








INDEX 


Robert Guiscard, 150, 179, 205, 
216 

Rocks of the Cyclops, 27 sqq. 

Roger I, King of Sicily, 33, 36, 
150, 151, 177, 179, 180 
sqq., 185, 187, 191, 194, 
207, 224 

Romans in Sicily, 49 sgq., 67, 
126, 133, 154, 168, 169, 
216, 232-3 

Rossi, Monti, 44 

Rupe Atenea, Girgenti, 120, 121, 
126, 135 


Palermo, 188, 209-10 
. Thomas of Canterbury, 155 
. Venera, Pozzo di, Aci Reale, 
26 
. Vénera, torrent, 15, 16 
. Vito, Mountains of, 160 
Salamis, Battle of, 55, 216, 222 
Salinas, Professor, 202 
Saracens in Sicily, 6, 67, 95, 149 
$qq., 177 Sqq., 183 
Savoca, 22 
Scamander (Sicilian), 159, 164, 
169 
Schisdé, Capo, 13, 15 
Sciacca, 137, 138, 139 
Caso di, 139 
Scylla, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10-11, 39 
Segesta, 58, 59, 63, 125, 130, 
I4I, 142, 153,157, 162, 
164 Sqq., 223 
Temple, 163, 165, 166, 167, 
- 169, 172-3 
Theatre, 165, 166, 167-8, 169 
Selerus, 42 


S. AGaTa (town), 228 

S. Alessio, Capo, 13 

S. Andrea, promontory, 13 

S. Croce, Capo, 48 

S. Elmo, citadel, Naples, 174 

S. Martino, 207 

S. Michele torrent, 216 

S. Panagia, Capo di, 48, 89, Io1 

S. Pantaleo, Island of, 152 

S. Paul at Athens, 81; at 
Messina, 4, 80 

S. Rosalia, patron saint of 

S 

Ss 

S 

Ss 


241 


Selinunte, 137 sqq., 149 
Acropolis, 142-3 
Temples, 127, 128, 129 sqq., 


143 
Selinus (see also Selinunte), 58, 
63, 124, 125, 138, 139, 
140, 141, 142, 144 Sqq., 
153, 154, 157, 169 
Temples at, 129 sqq. 
River, 141 
Serpotta, —, 196 
Sertino, 90 
Servile War, the, 139 
Sextus Pompeius, 67, 231 
Sicilian Expedition, see Athenian 
Expedition 
Sicilian Vespers, 184, 195 
Sicily, 5 
Food and Wines, 112, 113 sqq. 
Inns, 140, 228 sqq. 
Sikeli, the, 6, 17, 39, 103, 104-5, 
159, 169, 215 
Simois (Sicilian), 157, 164, 169 
Simonides, 51 
Sirens, the, 5 
Solarino, 90, 103 
Solefizzio, Serra del, 44 
Solinus, 26 
Soloeis, see Solunto. 
Solunto (Soluntum), 153, 211, 
215 
Sophocles, 19, 57, 233 
Sophron, 56, 218 
Soprano, Capo, 118 
Sortino, 100, 105, III 
Sortino Fusco, 105 
Sparagio, Monte, 167 
Stesichorus, 35, 36, 216, 217, 222 
Strabo, 41-2, 95, 160, 232 
Stromboli, 2, 12, 233 
Sulphur mines, 135 
Swinburne, Henry, 137, 139 
Symaethos, river, 25,26, 38, 45, 
47, 48 
Syraco, marsh, 54 
Syracuse, 16, 17, 18, 31, 32, 35, 
37, 45, 46 Sqq., 54 $94 
73 Sqq., 77, 92, 107, III, 
117, 142, 144, 145, 177, 
178,223 


242 


Syracuse, cont. 
Achradina, 49, 51, 56, 67, 68, 
77 $94., 82, 89, 91, 92, 
93, IOI 
Acropolis, see Ortygia below 
Agora, 65, 68, 69, 77-8 
Aqueduct, 89, 99 sqq. 
Belvedere, 53, 90, 100, IOI 
Casa Mezzi, 73 
Catacombs, 81 
Churches 
Cathegral, 69 sqq. 
S. Giovanni, 74, 80 
S. Lucia, 81, 209 
Cappella di, 81 
S. Marciano, 80-1 
Corso Umberto I, 68 
Due Fratelli, Islands, 77 
Ear of Dionysius, the, 82-4 
Epipole, 37, 39, 45,49, 51, 52, 
$3,056,.60, 637163, 767, 
972, 88 sqq., 99 
Euryalus, 51, 53, 60, 63, 64, 
66, 88, 89, 90, 91, 100 
Feasts, 115 
Food, 112 
Ginnasio Romano, 68 
Granaries, 73 
Greek theatre, 56, 57, 85 sqq., 
100, 168 
Harbours, 49, 52, 53, 62, 68, 
72; 73» 77: 85, gt, 92, 
IOI 
Hexapylum, 66, 90 
Labdalon, Fort, 60, 61 
Latomia dei Cappucini, 78, 
79, 80, 83 
Casale, 78, 80, 83 
del Filosofo, Epipole, 92 
del Paradiso, 78, 83 4 
di S. Vénera, 78, 83 
Modern, 73 sqq. 
Museo Nazionale, 49, 73, 74 
Sqq., 104, 118 
Neapolis, 51, 55, 60, 67, 82 
SQq-> QI 
Nympheum, 85, 88 
Ortygia, Island of, 32, 49, 51 
$qq., 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 
69, 71-2, 73 


CITIES OF SICILY 


Syracuse, cont. 
Palazzo Bellomo, 73 
Bucceri, 73 
Interlandi, 73 
Montalto, 73 
Piazza del Duomo, 69 
Pancali, 68, 69 
Ponte Grande, 94 
Porta Agragina, 77 
Round about, 94 sqq. 
Scala Greca, 66, 89, 90, 93 
St. Paul in, 80 
Temples, 51, 56, 82 
Artemis, 69 
Athena, 69 sqq. 
Olympieum, 61, 62 
Tyche, 49, 51, 61, 67, 68, 90, 
QI, 102 
Via Cavour, 69 
Gelone, 73 
Roma, 73 
Villa Landolina, 82 
Wines, 113 


TaciiAvis, Duke of, 137 
Tancred, King of Sicily, 183 
Taormina, 13 sqq., 20, 37, 39, 45; 
140, 150, 179 
Castello, 13, 14 
Carmine Church, 21 
Forum, 20 
Palaces, 20, 21 
Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, 
20 
Porta Catania, 21, 22 
Theatres, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, 
232-3 
Tauromenium, see Taormina — 
Taurus, Mount, 17 
Terillus, 55, 222 
Termini Imerese, 216, 223 
Sqq. 
Terranova (see ne Gela), 54, 
I10, 117-18 
Teutonic Order, Knights of the, 


194 
Thapsus, 48, 49, 52, 60, 61, 66, 


9, 92 
Theocles of Naxos, 16 


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INDEX | 


Theocritus, 22, 26, 29, 37, 51, 52, 
54, 66, 70, 71, 72, 73; 
90, 93, I00, IOI, 102, 
129 et alibi 
Theron, 55, 122, 133, 222, 223 
Thracian wine, 113 
Thrasybulus, 56, 85 
Thrasydeus, 123 
Thucydides, 16-17, 39, 52, 57, 
78-9, 89, 90, 103, 106 
See e se. XT2T, 152, 
158-9, 168, 215 
Thurii, 59, 102 
Thymbris, 90 
Vale, Ior 
Timeus, 17 
Timoleon, 17, 64-5, 70, 78, 85, 
138, 169 
Tindari, Gulf of, 212 
Torre del Filosofo, Etna, 43 
Torre Medioevale, Taormina, 21 
Torre del Teatro, Syracuse, 85 
Torto Valley, 216 
Trapani, 155, 156 sqq., 212 
Trecastagni, the, 26 
Trinacria, 154 
Trogilus, Bay, 49, 66, 89 
Promontory, 48, 89, Io sqq. 
Troy, 8, 12, 30, 158-9, 168, 218 
Tunny fishery of S. Panagia, 1o1, 
102 
Two Sicilies, Kingdom of, 182 
Tyndareus, 217 
Tyndarion, 17 
Tyndaris, 228, 231 sqq. 
Typheeus, 38 


ULrxis, Portus, see Ognina 
Urban II, Pope, 182 
Urban IV, Pope, 183, 184 


243 


VACCARINI, —, 33 

Van Dyck, 157, 196 

Vanni, Turino, 203 

Vaticano, Capo, 3, 9 

Velia, 126 

Vénere, Monte, 13, 14, 22 

Venus Callipyge, 75 

Venus Erycina, Temple of, 157, 
158, 160, 161 

Venus, the Paphian Temple of, 
160 

Verres, 66-7, 70, 73, 78, 82, 83, 
1305-1907 (332 

Verona, Amphitheatre of, 82 

Villa San Giovanni, Calabria, 


> 
Virgil, 40, 71, 116, 158, 169 
Vittoria, 110 
Vizzini, III—12 
Vulcano, 8, 230, 233 


WALTER of the Mill, Archbishop 
of Palermo, 186 sqq., 
195, 224 

William the Bad, King of Sicily, 
181, 185, 192, 204 

William the Conqueror, 179 

William the Good, King of 
Sicily, 182-3, 185, 186, 
187, I9I, 192, 193, 205, 


209 
William III, King of Sicily, 183 
Wines, Sicilian, 113 sqq. 


XIPHONIAN Promontory, 48, 
53, 101 


ZAFFARANO, Capo, 215 
Zankle (see also Messina), 3, 6, 
I17, 216, 230 











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